Artists can have greater access to reality; they can see patterns and details and connections that other people, distracted by the blur of life, might miss. Just sharing that truth can be a very powerful thing.
Jay-ZRead
People really feel like music is free but will pay $6 for water. You can drink water free out of the tap, and it's good water. But they're OK paying for it.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the contradiction of valuing music less than basic necessities like water, despite both being readily accessible.
Jay-Z's quote reflects on society's perception of music as a consumable art form that is often taken for granted, unlike essential resources such as water. It emphasizes the irony of people willing to pay for something that is essentially free at its source, while underestimating the value of creativity and artistic expression present in music.
In practice
In a discussion about the music industry's dynamics during a seminar.
Artists can have greater access to reality; they can see patterns and details and connections that other people, distracted by the blur of life, might miss. Just sharing that truth can be a very powerful thing.
The most amazing feeling I feel_x000D_ _x000D_ Words can't describe what I'm feeling for real _x000D_ _x000D_ Maybe I paint the sky blue _x000D_ _x000D_ My greatest creation was you.
Far from a Harvard student, just had the balls to do it
I never ask for nothin' I don't demand of myself. Honesty, loyalty, friends and then wealth
It was a very intense and stressful situation. There was playing in the Johnny-pump (an opened fire hydrant) and the ice-cream man coming around and all of these games that we'd play, and suddenly it would turn just violent and there would be shootings at 12 in the afternoon on any given day.
I would run into the corner store, the bodega, and just grab a paper bag or buy juice - anything just to get a paper bag. And I'd write the words on the paper bag and stuff these ideas in my pocket until I got back. Then I would transfer them into the notebook.
My favorite piece [piece of music] is the one we hear all the time if we are quiet.
Only truthful hands write true poems. I cannot see any basic difference between a handshake and a poem.
I always did what I thought was interesting. I always just did what caught my fantasy. Looking like a woman, that was never the criteria for me. It was always to do drag. And drag is not gender-specific. Drag is just drag. It's exaggeration.
I wouldn't want everybody to be an art or literature major, but the world would be poorer - figuratively, anyway - if we were all coding software or running companies. We also want musicians to awaken our souls, writers to lead us into fictional lands, and philosophers to help us exercise our minds and engage the world.
I can't think of anything worse, really, than to try to live up to someone else's expectations of what you should be. You don't make art by consensus.
Neanderthal man listened to stories, if one may judge by the shape of his skull. The primitive audience was an audience of shock-heads, gaping around the camp-fire, fatigued with contending against the mammoth or wooly-rhinoceros, and only kept awake by suspense. What would happen next? The novelist droned on, and as soon as the audience guessed what happened next, they either fell asleep or killed him.
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