I'm irresponsible to my career in order to paint. Because painting is obsessive. I forget to eat. I forget to sleep.
Interpretation
The quote expresses the speaker's deep dedication to painting, prioritizing it over basic needs and responsibilities.
Joni Mitchell emphasizes the consuming nature of her passion for painting, suggesting that her obsession with the art form transcends conventional priorities like career obligations, food, and sleep. This highlights the powerful influence of artistic pursuit on the individual, illustrating how deeply engaged artists can become in their creative processes, often at the cost of neglecting everyday responsibilities.
In practice
This quote could be shared in a creative writing workshop to inspire artists about the depths of their passion.
There's a man who's been out sailing In a decade full of dreams And he takes her to a schooner And he treats her like a queen Bearing beads from California With their amber stones and green He has called her from the harbor He has kissed her with his freedom He has heard her off to starboard In the breaking and the breathing Of the water weeds While she was busy being free
Unlike some of my peers, I haven't really hit a writer's block. When I hit a block I just paint, which is an old crop rotation trick.
This is a nation that has lost the ability to be self-critical, and that makes a lie out of the freedoms.
You wake up one day and suddenly realize that your youth is behind you, even though you're still young at heart.
I have an aversion to being mislabeled. Here's a label I'd accept: I'm an 'individual.' I'm someone who can't follow, and doesn't want to lead.
What I do is unusual: chordal movements that have never been used before, changing keys and modalities mid-song.
The writer, when he is also an artist, is someone who admits what others don't dare reveal.
Let me explain something about guitar playing. Everyone's got their own character, and that's the thing that's amazed me about guitar playing since the day I first picked it up. Everyone's approach to what can come out of six strings is different from another person, but it's all valid.
Pixar has been compared to fine furniture makers who polish the backs of drawers - even if you don't see everything in a particular scene, you still feel that every little detail has been met.
If literature has engaged me as a project, first as a reader, then as a writer, it is as an extension of my sympathies to other selves, other domains, other dreams, other territories.
I want to do what I can lend my talents to, but I want it to be as a human being and not as a two-dimensional character.
Who could not return from a visit to Jack Vance's world, without feeling that he had been somewhere unique, that he had experienced things unavailable in our mundane world?
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