15 August 2009

Henry Miller Quote from Tropic of Cancer

...a favorite author clears up my view on art well before I internally summarized it myself...

QUOTE:

"I have no money, no resources, no hope. I am the happiest man alive. A year ago, six months ago, I thought that I was an artist. I no longer think about it, I am. Everything that was literature has fallen from me. There are no more books to be written, thank God.

"This then? This is not a book. This is libel, slander, defamation of character. This is not a book, in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of Art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty...what you will. I am going to sing for you, a little off key perhaps, but I will sing. I will sing while you croak, I will dance over your dirty corpse...

"To sing you must first open your mouth. You must have a pair of lungs, and a little knowledge of music. It is not necessary to have an accordion, or a guitar. The essential thing is to want to sing. This then is a song. I am singing."

1 comment:

  1. Interesting that I would run across this looking for a fragment of Henry Miller to include in a piece of I'm working on the first page of my google search.

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