“Then he said that art could state very little - that its whole business was to evoke responses. And that without innovations and experiments - such as father's - all art would stagnate.”
Source: I Capture The Castle
“The ordinary reader, when warned against the obscurity of a poem, is apt to be thrown into a state of consternation very unfavourable to poetic receptivity. Instead of beginning, as he should, in a state of sensitivity, he obfuscates his senses by the desire to be clever and to look very hard for something, he doesn't know what-or else by the desire not to be taken ill. There is such a thing as stage fright, but what such readers have is pit or gallery fright. The more seasoned reader, he who has reached, in these matters, a state of greater purity, does not bother about understanding; not, at least, at first. I know that some of the poetry to which I am most devoted is poetry which I did not understand at first reading; some is poetry which I am not sure I understand yet: for instance, Shakespeare's.”
Source: The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism
“Maybe it was mild mania, a little storm in sequins. The line winds when it comes to creativity and mental illness. But a flatline is always exactly what it is. Sometimes you have to embrace a little madness in art, and my mom was fully committed.”
Source: Glitter Saints: The Cosmic Art of Forgiveness, a Memoir
“So many sunrises and sunsets have to happen to achieve a certain hue or perspective that didn’t exist before. That we can hold in our hands or wear upon our breast as evidence of our own weathering, talismans of our survival.”
Source: Glitter Saints: The Cosmic Art of Forgiveness, a Memoir
“Creativity promises you a mess; making meaning of that mess is the whole world. Sometimes it’s all chaos, a collection of stains. Art is just an offering to the process.”
Source: Glitter Saints: The Cosmic Art of Forgiveness, a Memoir
“She had to get to the essence of the thing—to feel with her hands the undoing, and watch with her own eyes the reconnection.”
Source: Glitter Saints: The Cosmic Art of Forgiveness, a Memoir
“Mom wasn’t gonna sugarcoat anything, not ever. But she also wasn’t going to let it pass by. Nothing in her life, it seemed, was salvageable. But everything was material.”
Source: Glitter Saints: The Cosmic Art of Forgiveness, a Memoir
“They were her recognition and her offering—a bit of matter, coated in glitter, and placed before a saint.”
Source: Glitter Saints: The Cosmic Art of Forgiveness, a Memoir
“The muses aren’t the material, but they speak through the tools, sparking signals in a language of symbols we can only read backwards.The wounds have been the way. Back to where we started, brought to our knees, eye-level with those small oracles that speak directly to our heart.”
Source: Glitter Saints: The Cosmic Art of Forgiveness, a Memoir
“What do you spin with the light you are given?
Releasing is in the telling, even as it is unfolding. In the middle of a miracle, God’s art exhibit we’re blessed to exist in. Once we look past ourselves and on to the possibilities of our contributions, we no longer have time or the hunger for such validation. Stay bewildered and in love with your possibilities. Thank your ego for your survival and then politely set it free. Jump into your spirit that lives in your soul and get busy creating beauty and love and stay so intoxicated with heart songs that you never remember to wonder about the mediocrity of life again.”
Source: Glitter Saints: The Cosmic Art of Forgiveness, a Memoir