The stage is a place where I can be wholly myself. Even though you're in front of people almost to be judged, it is a place without judgement.
Interpretation
The stage allows for authentic self-expression, free from judgment despite the audience's presence.
Florence Welch expresses the notion that a stage serves as a unique platform for self-expression. Although there is an audience that might judge, the experience of performing allows her to be her true self, creating an environment that feels free and liberating.
In practice
During a motivational speech to aspiring artists, this quote can serve as a reminder of the importance of being true to oneself.
I love performing outside because it's as if the heavens are open and the elements become part of the stage show as well - you know, the wind and the rain and the thunder. It's almost as if there's a sense of invocation in performance.
I was a heavy heart to carry_x000D_ My beloved was weighed down_x000D_ My arms around his neck_x000D_ My fingers laced to crown._x000D_ I was a heavy heart to carry_x000D_ My feet dragged across ground_x000D_ And he took me to the river_x000D_ Where he slowly let me drown_x000D_ My love has concrete feet_x000D_ My love's an iron ball_x000D_ Wrapped around your ankles _x000D_ Over the waterfall
I don't want your future,_x000D_ I don't need your past._x000D_ One bright moment_x000D_ Is all I ask.
My visual landscape as a child was the inside of a lot of these old churches. And the Baroque drama of the things was what I was first engaging with artwise. I'm much more attracted to the aesthetic of religious iconography than the actual religious side. The passion and the blood and the violence and the gaudy side of it I find really fascinating.
Music is my way out. I keep things locked up and never say anything. I guess in order to say something to one person, I have to sing it to a couple of thousand. It doesn't make for healthy relationships.
When something really hits me, it makes me want to either jump off something really high or lie down and be buried. I want people to get hit and caught by my music.
The theatre is supremely fitted to say: 'Behold! These things are.' Yet most dramatists employ it to say: 'This moral truth can be learned from beholding this action.'
The artist is of no importance. Only what he creates is important, since there is nothing new to be said. Shakespeare, Balzac, Homer have all written about the same things, and if they had lived one thousand or two thousand years longer, the publishers wouldn't have needed anyone since.
The one thing a writer has to have is a pencil and some paper. That's enough, so long as she knows that she and she alone is in charge of that pencil, and responsible, she and she alone, for what it writes on that paper.
Architecture is always the will of the age conceived as space - nothing else. Until this simple truth is clearly recognized, the struggle over the foundation of a new architecture confident in its aims and powerful in its impact cannot be realized; until then, it is destined to remain a chaos of uncoordinated forces.
I have always tried with my shows - win, lose, or draw - to take the boundaries of music as far as I can.
I probably get a deeper satisfaction of having taken a very good photograph than of having written something very good, a very good story. Maybe it's because the element of magic is so present in a good photograph - luck and magic, but also hard work and being ready and all that.
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