There have been times when I'm writing about things that are personally embarrassing. Like any human being, sometimes I can't help but wonder - 'What are the people I know going to think about this?' So I have to remind myself that all is permissible. Art has to be a free space. Language has to be a free space.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of freedom in artistic expression, even when facing personal vulnerability.
William T. Vollmann highlights the struggle between personal embarrassment and the necessity for unfettered expression in art and language. He acknowledges the natural human concern about others' opinions but asserts the need for art to remain a space where anything can be explored and expressed freely, untouched by societal judgments.
In practice
In a discussion about the role of vulnerability in creative writing, this quote can be cited to illustrate the necessity of honesty in art.
Everybody is an expert on one thing - that's what I learned in my high school journalism class - and that's, of course, his own life. And everybody deserves to live and have his story told. And if it doesn't seem like an interesting story, then that's the failure of the listener, or the journalist who retells it badly.
When I'm dying, I want to think I did what I felt was best for the words I was writing. This may mean, at any time, that I won't be publishable anymore.
The good critic is he who relates the adventures of his soul among masterpieces.
Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.
Underwater, I experience space with my body. I'll see a school of fish gathering and moving together and I'll exclaim, 'This is architecture.'
Copy, art, and typography should be seen as a living entity; each element integrally related, in harmony with the whole, and essential to the execution of an idea.
I could hardly sit through 'Frozen.' There was an attempt to craft a moral message and to build the story around that, instead of building the story and letting the moral message emerge. It was the subjugation of art to propaganda, in my estimation.
The poetry of fashion lies in the creation of illusion
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