Often, especially young artists, you feel like you should be doing something. And I think that can be very destructive because creativity is about connecting with the stuff that's deep inside you and making something out of that.
Interpretation
Creativity stems from inner feelings rather than external pressures to produce.
Max Richter highlights the struggle that young artists often face in feeling pressured to create constantly. He suggests that true creativity comes from a deep personal connection to one's feelings and experiences, rather than from conforming to external expectations or demands, which can hinder artistic development and expression.
In practice
This quote can be used during a workshop for young artists to inspire them to trust their creative process.
I'm suspicious of the idea of categories in music and this idea of things being in boxes. To me, that seems unnatural. I write the music that somebody with my biography would write, and the thing that's always driven me is an enthusiasm for the material. I sort of follow the notes to where they want to go.
All music is just a collision of sounds until you know its internal conventions and understand the nuances. It's a question of familiarity.
The thing that makes me want to write a piece of music is having something to talk about, you know? Something I want to get across. Because I'm a composer, music is my first language, and that's what I reach for when I want to convey something.
If something doesn't creep into a drawing that you're not prepared for, you might as well not have drawn it.
I believe that as a writer and a director, you're only providing the skeleton of a character, and you're hiring actors to fill it out.
Any photograph has multiple meanings: indeed, to see something in the form of a photograph is to encounter a potential object of fascination. The ultimate wisdom of the photographic image is to say: “There is the surface. Now think – or rather feel, intuit – what is beyond it, what the reality must be like if it looks this way.’ Photographs, which cannot themselves explain anything, are inexhaustible invitations to deduction, speculation, and fantasy
The biggest thrill you can have is to tell people one of your songs, and have them be able to hum it.
I will take the sun in my mouth and leap into the ripe air Alive with closed eyes to dash against darkness
When you go out to paint, try to forget what objects you have before you - a tree, house, a field....Merely think, here is a little square of blue, here an oblong of pink, here a streak of yellow, and paint it just as it looks to you, the exact color and shape, until it gives your own naive impression of the scene before you.
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