The basic inquisitiveness of the human mind serves the fundamental desire of the human to establish meaningful relationships between himself or herself and the world, and (intrinsic to that process) to put his or her personal stamp on some aspect of the surround.
—Seymour B. Sarason, The Challenge of Art to Psychology, pp. 68–69.
Holding on to one of humanity’s most beautiful instruments on behalf of one of the most generous people I know. There will be a song in the first album for you, Mambo King.
Stephen Bliss in an interview with Keisha Raines at Unrated:
During your career there’s probably going to be many times when you think your work is awful and you’ll want to give up. That’s the Universe’s way of saying, “Ok, you’ve done a bit of good work, you’ve enjoyed a few days of thinking you’re a genius, now it’s time to get better… Take your despondency, survive it, work out why you think your work is shit, how can you make your work better? Improve… If you can’t handle feeling like the worse artist to walk the planet then piss off and wash dishes…” If you, as an artist, don’t feel like this sometimes then you’re doing something wrong, it’s a normal part of the creative process. There’s going to be a lot of knocks, you’re going to need a lot of endurance. Enjoy the successes and learn from the failures. Eat your greens and be polite.
See also, The Power of the Palimpsest.