A Quote by Bill Viola

My works really begin in a very simple way. Sometimes it's an image, and sometimes it's words I might write, like a fragment of a poem. — © Bill Viola
My works really begin in a very simple way. Sometimes it's an image, and sometimes it's words I might write, like a fragment of a poem.
Sometimes the only way I know how to work through something is by writing a poem. And sometimes I get to the end of the poem and look back and go, 'Oh, that's what this is all about,' and sometimes I get to the end of the poem and haven't solved anything, but at least I have a new poem out of it.
I sometimes try to write something that is actually really simple and I can't do it. So, then, it's not simple anymore. It's really hard and it gets all messed up. I sometimes sit down and try to write a song with just three chords and it doesn't work.
It's great to work with friends. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't, but everybody goes into it knowing that. Like, 'We might be really good friends, but we might be terrible collaborators.'
Sometimes I feel like being an intellectual. Sometimes I like to just be aggressive and all the way in my feelings. Sometimes I might be emotional, or sometimes I might drag on the track and be lazy. I just like to share the different states of existence of Kevin Gates with the rest of the world.
Like a pianist runs her fingers over the keys, I'll search my mind for what to say. Now, the poem may want you to write it. And then sometimes you see a situation and think, 'I'd like to write about that.' Those are two different ways of being approached by a poem, or approaching a poem.
Ideas in art may be quite evident, and sometimes they're hidden. Sometimes they're simple, and sometimes they're quite complex. Great works of art can be based on very simple ideas, but it's all in the making, isn't it? It's in the facture.
There's no set way to do anything. Sometimes you have to go outside the box; sometimes you can do things the standard way. Like, you don't have to have a beat to write a song: sometimes you can write lyrics without the music.
When you write something, at first you might feel very defensive and protective of every single thing, but after a while, you just see what works and what doesn't. Sometimes you do test screenings, and an audience tells you that, or sometimes you eventually just go, 'Let's cut the joke out.'
Here's the bottom line; writers write. Sometimes words flow easily. Sometimes it's like sloughing through mud. Either way a professional writer keeps writing.
Sometimes I write quickly, sometimes I spend several weeks on a single poem. I would really love for readers not to be able to guess which of the poems took so much work!
Sometimes I use words to throw you from once scene to the other, and sometimes I use words to pull you from one scene to the other. You might not be aware of it, but I may have overlapping words one way or the other. So, I'm actually using words.
At the very beginning when I begin writing a poem I try not to think of the audience or anyone at all except for trying to get at the very center of what is driving that poem. In a way it's like analyzing myself.
Sometimes the fragment of a conversation, the color of the sky, the image in a dream, has everything to do with where the song begins.
In fact, sometimes traveling the world is a way of not writing a poem, but it's the quality of experience. It's being able to experience something and when you begin to write about it be able to apply the tools that you need for writing.
I think sometimes when you speak about something like 'Indian classical music' and 'ragas,' and all of that's new to people, it can be quite intimidating, in the same way that I have sometimes found opera and Wagner intimidating - one doesn't know where to begin sometimes.
Words are a big deal to me. I'm verbal and visual and I'm always struggling to find a way to smash those two parts of my cerebral cortex together. Sometimes it works, sometimes it feels mentally disjunctive.
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