Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the challenge of expressing one's inner vision through art. It suggests that while the ideas may be clear in the mind, translating them onto the canvas can be difficult.
Jack Kerouac's quote highlights the artist's dilemma of trying to manifest the vividness of their inner thoughts and emotions through their work. While the flow of creativity may be distinctly present in one's mind, the act of capturing and sketching that flow in a tangible form can be an arduous and often frustrating task. This struggle reflects the universal experience of artists striving to reconcile their imaginative ideas with the limitations of their chosen medium.
In practice
In an art class, while discussing the challenges of painting, you might share this quote to inspire students.
Dharma Bums refusing to subscribe to the general demand that they consume production and therefore have to work for the privilege of consuming, all that cramp they didn't really want anyway such as refrigerators, TV sets, cars, at least new fancy cars, certain hair oils and deodorants and general junk you finally always see a week later in the garbage anyway, all of them imprisoned in a system of work, produce, consume, work, produce, consume.
I was amazed by the fact that I was not the only writer living, not the only young man "with a locomotive in his chest, and that's a fact," not the only youth with a million hungers and not one of them appeasable, not the only one who is lonely among multitudes, and does not know why.
My aunt once said that the world would never find peace until men fell at their women's feet and asked for forgiveness.
The bus roared through Indiana cornfields that night; the moon illuminated the ghostly gathered husks; it was almost Halloween. I made the acquaintance of a girl and we necked all the way to Indianapolis. She was nearsighted. When we got off to eat I had to lead her by the hand to the lunch counter. She bought my meals; my sandwiches were all gone. In exchange I told her long stories.
Holding up my purring cat to the moon. I sighed.
It seemed like a matter of minutes when we began rolling in the foothills before Oakland and suddenly reached a height and saw stretched out ahead of us the fabulous white city of San Francisco on her eleven mystic hills with the blue Pacific and its advancing wall of potato-patch fog beyond, and smoke and goldenness in the late afternoon of time.
I always had a knack for improvisation. I can write down the notes I play, but never really had a proper academic musical background. I suppose I'm blessed and cursed by the fact I have that freedom.
Architecture arouses sentiments in man. The architect's task therefore, is to make those sentiments more precise.
Before you can write a novel you have to have a number of ideas that come together. One idea is not enough.
What I do is unusual: chordal movements that have never been used before, changing keys and modalities mid-song.
I am always wandering around in enigmas. There are young people who constantly come to tell me: you, too, are making Op Art. I haven't the slightest idea what that is, Op Art. I've been doing this work for thirty years now.
I like the construction of sentences and the juxtaposition of words-not just how they sound or what they mean, but even what they look like.
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