Music is the arithmetic of sounds as optics is the geometry of light.
Claude DebussyRead
I wish to sing of my interior visions with the naive candour of a child.
Interpretation
The quote expresses a desire to share personal insights and emotions with the innocence and honesty of a child.
Claude Debussy's quote reflects an aspiration to convey one's inner thoughts and feelings through art in a pure and unfiltered manner. By referencing the 'naive candour of a child,' Debussy emphasizes the importance of authenticity and sincerity in artistic expression, suggesting that true artistry comes from a place of honest self-reflection and vulnerability.
In practice
In a speech about creativity, one might say, 'Like Debussy, I strive to express my inner visions with the pure candour of a child.'
Music is the arithmetic of sounds as optics is the geometry of light.
The colour of my soul is iron-grey and sad bats wheel about the steeple of my dreams.
On those who overanalyze his music: When you tear the wings off a butterfly, it is no longer a butterfly
But music, don't you know, is a dream from which the veils have been lifted. It's not even the expression of a feeling, it's the feeling itself.
People come to music to seek oblivion: is that not also a form of deception?
Some people wish above all to conform to the rules, I wish only to render what I can hear.
A song has to take on character, shape, body and influence people to an extent that they use it for their own devices. It must affect them not just as a song, but as a lifestyle.
The worst tragedy for a poet is to be admired through being misunderstood.
When I first started writing plays I couldn't write good dialogue because I didn't respect how black people talked. I thought that in order to make art out of their dialogue I had to change it, make it into something different. Once I learned to value and respect my characters, I could really hear them. I let them start talking.
I don't care if the audience is 600 Saul Bellows; I'm going to knock them dead with a comedy routine. I'm out there as a missionary for literature because, if people laugh and enjoy themselves, they might actually do something as bizarre as reading the book.
The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible.
The sacred sense of beyond, of timelessness, of a world which had an eternal value and the substance of which was divine had been given back to me today by this friend of mine who taught me dancing.
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