I think it's our responsibility as artists to not only fight for our art but fight for the communities that are the reason we're able to continue making art, especially since, in Brooklyn's case, we as artists somehow made it 'cool' enough for the bigger money-making industries to start taking over.
Interpretation
Artists have a duty to advocate for their communities and safeguard their art from commercial exploitation.
In this quote, Mitski emphasizes the essential role artists play not only in creating art but also in protecting the cultural and community contexts that foster artistic expression. She suggests that as artists gain recognition, there comes a responsibility to ensure that the very communities contributing to their artistry are not overtaken by commercial interests, thereby losing their unique identity and significance.
In practice
In a speech at an arts fundraiser, one could quote Mitski to highlight the connection between artists and their communities.
Honestly, in the music business, it's all about being cool or being the newest thing or being the 'It' person, and I've tried really hard to be what is expected of me or what would be advantageous to my career, and I just reached the point where I said, 'No, I'm an emotional loser. I can't pretend to not care.'
Negatives are the notebooks, the jottings, the false starts, the whims, the poor drafts, and the good draft but never the completed version of the work The print and a proper one is the only completed photograph, whether it is specifically shaded for reproduction, or for a museum wall.
Reruns are wonderful because it usually indicates that they had something going for them to begin with and that's why you're still looking at them. And in both my shows, The Dick Van Dyke Show and the last one, they were so well written and so good they hold up.
Dogmatism of all kinds--scientific, economic, moral, as well as political--are threatened by the creative freedom of the artist. This is necessarily and inevitably so. We cannot escape our anxiety over the fact that the artists together with creative persons of all sorts, are the possible destroyer of our nicely ordered systems. (p. 76)
My desire as a storyteller is to always catch the readers off guard; to give them something they aren't expecting, and take them in a direction that is satisfying in the here and non.
It took, for me, a long time to develop this idea of what to do on the radio. But from the beginning of my time in radio, I had pretty non-traditional tasks.
Music at times is more like perfume than mathematics.
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