I am a member of the Muskogee people. I'm a poet, a musician, a dreamer of sorts, a questioner. Like everyone else, I'm looking for answers of some sort or the other.
Interpretation
The quote expresses a deep connection to identity and the search for meaning through creativity.
Joy Harjo emphasizes the importance of belonging to a community while also embodying various roles such as a poet, musician, and dreamer. This reflects the universal human experience of seeking answers in life through expression and introspection, highlighting the intersection of culture, art, and personal exploration.
In practice
In a poetry reading, one might say, 'As Joy Harjo expresses, I too am a poet and a questioner in search of meaning.'
It's important as a writer to do my art well and do it in a way that is powerful and beautiful and meaningful, so that my work regenerates the people, certainly Indian people, and the earth and the sun. And in that way we all continue forever.
A story matrix connects all of us._x000D_ There are rules, processes, and circles of responsibility in this world. And the story begins exactly where it is supposed to begin. We cannot skip any part.
You just go where poetry is, whether it's in your heart or your mind or in books or in places where there's live poetry or recordings.
Bottom line, I have to follow what my soul says, or my spirit. And my spirit said that poetry and the arts should be without borders, should be without political borders.
I don't like this romanticization of Indian people in which Indian people are looked at as spiritual saviors, as people who have always taken care of the land. We're human beings. But I think different cultures have developed different aspects of humanness.
Humans are vulnerable and rely on the kindnesses of the earth and the sun; we exist together in a sacred field of meaning.
Where words leave off, music begins.
Prose-it might be speculated-is discourse; poetry ellipsis. Prose is spoken aloud; poetry overheard. The one is presumably articulate and social, a shared language, the voice of "communication"; the other is private, allusive, teasing, sly, idiosyncratic as the spider's delicate web, a kind of witchcraft unfathomable to ordinary minds.
Because of how much movies cost, it's dangerous to be experimental on one film after the other. But we can experiment with television. We can do things that are fringe and bring ideas to the table that are offbeat and original.
Do you know what a playwright is? A playwright is someone who lets his guts hang out on the stage.
I can only think of music as something inherent in every human being - a birthright. Music coordinates mind, body and spirit.
My mother encouraged me to be artistic. It was written in a contract at an early age that I would be an artist.
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