Reflections
June 1st, 2009 by BlakeI passed by a quote in my notes I wrote down 6 years ago when looking though some of my older papers and going through reflections. It really wowed me back then and now it sends a surge of energy through me. Here it is.
“That is the payment I demand. Not many can afford it. I don’t mean your enjoyment, I don’t mean your emotion–emotions be damned!–I mean your understanding and the fact that your enjoyment was of the same nature as mine, that it came from the same source: from your intelligence, from the conscious judgment of a mind able to judge my work by the standard of the same values that went to write it—I mean, not the fact that you felt, but that you felt what I wished you to feel, not the fact that you admire my work, but that you admire it for the things I wished to be admired.” He chuckled. “There’s only one passion in most artists more violent than their desire for admiration: their fear of identifying the nature of such admiration as they do receive. But it’s a fear I’ve never shared. I do not fool myself about my work or the response I seek—I value both too highly. I do not care to be admired causelessly, emotionally, intuitively, instinctively—or blindly. I do not care for deafness; I have too much to say. I do not care to be admired by anyone’s heart—only by someone’s head. And when I find a customer with that invaluable capacity, then my performance is a mutual trade to a mutual profit. An artist is a trader, Miss Taggart, the hardest and most exacting of all traders. Now do you understand me?”
A book I read quite a long time ago named Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand.
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