I came to the realization that I can also satisfy my creative side by giving somebody else a chance. I don't have to be in front of the camera for every project.
Interpretation
Creativity can be expressed through empowering others rather than seeking the spotlight.
In this quote, Michael B. Jordan reflects on the understanding that nurturing and showcasing the talents of others can be just as fulfilling as pursuing one's own creative endeavors. He emphasizes the importance of collaboration and how stepping back can enrich both personal satisfaction and the creative process as a whole.
In practice
In a speech at a creative conference, to illustrate the importance of collaboration in artistic projects.
You start at a young age, going on auditions, and you think you did a good job and expect to get that role, and you don't, and it's a letdown, a disappointment. So you tell yourself to just do the work and disconnect, because you have no control over the outcome.
I want to leave something behind. A blueprint. A work ethic. Something that my great-grandkids and their kids and their kids can see: This is where it started. Lineage. Intergenerational wealth. Things that are here forever. All that.
I think history repeats itself. There's a constant conversation between the oppressed and the oppressor. No matter what your field is, whether it's gender equality, the Time's Up movement, or diversity casting, it's always going to be a back-and-forth battle.
The process I go through in the art and the architecture, I actually want it to be almost childlike. Sometimes I think it's magical.
My directors of photography light my films, but the colours of the sets, furnishings, clothes, hairstyles - that's me. Everything that's in front of the camera, I bring you.
People always say when they meet me that I'm not what they expect. I assume they think I'm this super dark and depressing guy, but I like to channel all of those emotions into my work.
When I started working on ambient music, my idea was to make music that was more like painting.
Film acting, if you don't play the lead, you come, and you do your scenes in a few days, and you act with a couple of colleagues. All the rest of the actors you never see, and you don't even meet many of them. And you don't know what will happen with what you've done. Maybe it will be in the film, maybe it will not.
As a poet and writer, I deeply love and I deeply hate words. I love the infinite evidence and change and requirements and possibilities of language; every human use of words that is joyful, or honest or new, because experience is new... But as a Black poet and writer, I hate words that cancel my name and my history and the freedom of my future: I hate the words that condemn and refuse the language of my people in America.
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