God bless Jeanette Winterson

[ellenkushner]

Art is central to all our lives, not just the better-off and educated. . . I know that from my own story, and from the evidence of every child ever born — they all want to hear and to tell stories, to sing, to make music, to act out little dramas, to paint pictures, to make sculptures.

This is born in and we breed it out.

And then, when we have bred it out, we say that art is elitist, and at the same time we either fetishize art — the high prices, the jargon, the inaccessibility — or we ignore it.

The truth is, artist or not, we are all born on the creative continuum, and that is a heritage and a birthright of all of our lives.

-- Jeanette Winterson (author of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit), from an essay quoted in NYTimes Sunday Book Review, 12/19/08 (line spacing mine)

Comments

[middlemarching.livejournal.com]

Noticed that after I'd posted the comment. ^^;