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.
If people have split views about your work, I think it's flattering. I'd rather have them feel something about it than dismiss it.
Movement is expressive. I've never denied that. I don't think there's such a thing as abstract dance.
I write for the same reason I breathe - because if I didn't, I would die.
Writing keeps me at my desk, constantly trying to write a perfect sentence. It is a great privilege to make one's living from writing sentences. The sentence is the greatest invention of civilization. To sit all day long assembling these extraordinary strings of words is a marvelous thing. I couldn't ask for anything better. It's as near to godliness as I can get.
In the traditional Islamic world, the hierarchy of the arts was not based on whether they were "fine" or "industrial" or "minor". It was based upon the effect of art on the soul of the human being.
For me, music and life are all about style.
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