Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.
Interpretation
Life is about uncertainty and the unknown, and true creativity lies in embracing that mystery.
Agnes De Mille emphasizes that living fully involves embracing uncertainty and the unknown. When one becomes overly certain and confident in their understanding, they cease to truly live and create, losing the spontaneity that defines the artistic spirit. The artist's journey is one of continuous exploration and vulnerability, suggesting that taking risks and accepting the potential for failure is essential to both life and artistry.
In practice
In a motivational speech about taking risks in career choices.
Ours is an upbeat, a hurried, hasty beat. It keeps pressing us to go farther, to include everything so that we can savor everything, so that we can know everything, so that we will miss nothing. Partly it's greed, but mainly its curiosity. We just want to experience it. And we do.
No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made. Destiny is made known silently.
The truest expression of a people is in its dances and its music. Bodies never lie.
Ballet technique never becomes easy, it becomes possible
To dance is to be out of yourself. Larger, more beautiful, more powerful. This is power, it is glory on earth and it is yours for the taking.
We can't stand silence, because silence induces thinking. And if we thought, we would have to face ourselves.
Learn to respect this sacred moment of birth, as fragile, as fleeting, as elusive as dawn.
Maybe young women don't wonder whether they can have it all any longer, but in case any of you are wondering, of course you can have it all. It will be a little messy, but embrace the mess. It will be complicated, but rejoice in the complications. It will not be anything like what you think it will be like, but surprises are good for you. And don't be frightened: you can always change your mind. I know: I've had four careers and three husbands.
Let us learn to appreciate there will be times when the trees will be bare, and look forward to the time when we may pick the fruit.
Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night, Brother to Death, in silent darkness born, Relieve my languish and restore the light; With dark forgetting of my care return. And let the day be time enough to mourn The shipwreck of my ill adventured youth: Let waking eyes suffice to wail their scorn Without the torment of the night's untruth.
So you can't dance? Not at all? Not even one step? How can you say that you've taken any trouble to live when you won't even dance?
And that almost everyone was struggling to wake up, to be loved, and not feel so afraid all the time. That's what the cars, degrees, booze, and drugs were about.
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