I've always envied people who compose music or paint, because they don't have to be bothered with the sort of crude mess that language normally is, in everyday life and in the way we use it.
Interpretation
The quote expresses a longing for the clarity and beauty of music and art compared to the often messy and imperfect nature of language.
Franz Wright reflects on his envy towards musicians and painters, suggesting that they possess the ability to convey emotions and ideas in a purer form than language allows. He implies that language is frequently inadequate and messy in everyday communication, whereas music and visual art can transcend these limitations and communicate in a more direct and profound way.
In practice
In a speech about creativity at an art festival.
We know there are poets who are chosen: by what or whom, we no more know than what lies beyond our final breath, or what caused a certain action which resulted in the fulfillment or the desecration and collapse of what we most cared for in life.
EPITAPH Now I'm not the brightest knife in the drawer, but I know a couple things about this life: poverty silence, impermanence discipline and mystery The world is not illusory, we are From crimson thread to toe tag If you are not disturbed there is something seriously wrong with you, I'm sorry And I know who I am I'll be a voice coming from nowhere, inside-- be glad for me.
I am in no way different from anyone else, that my predicament, my sense of aloneness or isolation may be precisely what unites me with everyone.
When I'm in certain moods, a conversation will start up in my head, and suddenly I'll realize that the language has reached a very high and interesting level, and then lines and stanzas will just kind of appear, full-blown.
The humiliation I go through/when I think of my past/can only be described as grace./We are created by being destroyed.
I live in a country where music has very little success, though, exclusive of those who have forsaken us, we have still admirable professors and, more particularly, composers of great solidity, knowledge, and taste.
People associate me with a time when movies were pleasant, when women wore pretty dresses in films and you heard beautiful music. I always love it when people write me and and say 'I was having a rotten time, and I walked into a cinema and saw one of your movies, and it made such a difference.'
Wit can be beautiful, because it expresses and distills an idea.
The importance of poetry is not measured, finally, by what the poet says but by how he says it.
The way I write my songs is that I have to believe what I’m writing about, and that’s why they always end up being so personal - because the kind of artists I like, they convince me, they totally win me over straight away in that thing. Like, “Oh my God, this song is totally about me.”
I detest talking about myself. There is a reason why people pick up an instrument and put it between themselves and the rest of the world.
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