I did a lot of touring in my youth, and I learnt very quickly that giving is what it's all about. It's about the gift of making an audience feel great and forget their cares, if only for a few hours.
Interpretation
Giving to others and creating joy is the essence of performance.
This quote highlights the importance of generosity and the act of giving in artistic expression, particularly in performance. Julie Andrews emphasizes that the true value of performing lies in the ability to uplift an audience, allowing them to escape their worries and experience happiness, even if just momentarily.
In practice
This quote can be used to inspire a group of artists at a workshop about the importance of audience engagement.
I've learned a lot of things about myself through singing. I used to have a certain dislike of the audience, not as individual people, but as a giant body who was judging me. Of course, it wasn`t really them judging me. It was me judging me. Once I got past that fear, it freed me up, not just when I was performing but in other parts of my life.
Singing has been a cherished gift, and my inability to sing has been a devastating blow.
My mother was terribly important to me, and I know how much I yearned for her in my youth, but I don't think I truly trusted her.
I come from a long line of below-stairs maids and gardeners. Good ol' peasant stock. My mother and her sister made a quantum leap out of that life. Then I made another quantum leap.
Every time I go out to perform, believe me. You never lose that fear of, 'I hope I do it right. I hope I don't fall flat on my face. I hope this will be good for them.'
Success is terrifying. Like happiness, it is often appreciated in retrospect. It's only later that you place it in perspective. Years from now, I'll look back and say, ‘God, wasn't it wonderful.’
My only worry is the painting I'm doing. Nothing else.
Poetry is the essence of everything, and it’s through deep contact with reality and living fully that you reach poetry. Very often I see photographers cultivating the strangeness or awkwardness of a scene, thinking it is poetry. No. Poetry is two elements which are suddenly conflict — a spark between two elements. But it’s given very seldom, and you can’t look for it. It’s like if you look for inspiration. No, it just comes by enriching yourself and living.
Since the model he so faithfully copies is not going to be hung up next to the picture... it is of no interest whether it is an accurate copy of the model.
The arts make vivid the fact that words do not, in their literal form or number, exhaust what we can know. The limits of our language do not define the limits of our cognition.
A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself.
The artistic life is a long, lovely suicide.
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