I see myself first and foremost as a student of expression.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of continuous learning and self-expression.
In this quote, Anna Deavere Smith articulates her identity as a lifelong learner, highlighting the necessity of understanding and mastering the art of expression. She positions herself as a student, suggesting that true artistry involves a dedication to growth, exploration, and the relentless pursuit of knowledge in how we communicate and connect with others.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of art education, one might quote Anna Deavere Smith to emphasize the role of ongoing learning in expression.
If I do three interviews in a day, I can be exhausted, because the process of hearing everyone requires that I empty out myself. While I'm listening, my own judgments and prejudices certainly come up. But I know I won't get anything unless I get those things out of the way.
I'm interested when things are upside down - because there are so many possibilities in that one moment. There is a lot that is exposed.
Artists are the people that no matter what, pick up the pen, pick up a paintbrush. They take the time to translate what is happening to create something that resonates deeply with the rest of the people that are caught in the middle of their own reality.
Even jealousy is based on fantasies: a fantasy that someone else has what belongs to you.
Each person has a literature inside them.
I think we can learn a lot about a person in the very moment that language fails them. In the very moment they they have to be more creative than they would have imagined in order to communicate. It's the very moment that they have to dig deeper than the surface to find words, and at the same time, it's a moment when they want to communicate very badly. They're digging deep and projecting out at the same time.
[The artist] is like a pump; he has inside him a great pipe that reaches down into the entrails of things, the deepest layers. He sucks up what was lying there below, dim and unnoticed, and brings it in great jets to the sunlight.
Now sexual obsessions are the basis of artistic creation. Accumulated frustration leads to what Freud calls the process of sublimation. Anything that does not take place erotically sublimates itself in the work of art
I hadn't performed by myself in a while. It feels very natural to me, and I assume people come for the very same reasons as they do when I'm with the band: to be moved, for something to happen to them.
When she listened to songs that she loved on the radio, something stirred inside her. A liquid ache spread under her skin, and she walked out of the world like a witch.
I find in my own writing that only fiction - and rarely, a poem - fully tests me to the kind of limits of what I know and what I feel.
These designers have no reserve. They've chosen a path and thrown themselves onto it head first, regardless of everything. Whether or not their designs are sellable or vulgar. As long as it's new and people talk about it. That is the truth.
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