HELIOLITH

“The way things are it seems to me that from the artistic point of view there’s an immense waste of talent– a waste of people who are not allowed to develop and use all that’s in them.  And from every point of view there is a loss of human dignity and hope and happiness.”

“The whole problem of living can never be understood until the world recognizes that artists are not a race apart.  Every man has some element of the artist in him and if this is pulled up by the roots he becomes suicidal and dies.    In the East this quality has never been damaged– to that is traceable the virility of most Eastern peoples.  In the West it remains healthy and active only amongst those sections of the community which have never fully subscribed to Western values- that is, the exploited sections, plus some rebels from the bourgeoisie.  For the rest, mathematical thinking has made them so intellectualized, so detached and self conscious that it has tended to kill the creative emotional side.  The result is that as Western civilization advances its members find themselves in the paradoxical position of being more and more in control of their environment, yet more and more at the mercy of it.  The man who accepts Western Values absolutely, finds his creative faculties becoming so warped and stunted that he is almost completely dependent on external satisfactions; and the moment he becomes frustrated in his search for these, he begins to develop neurotic symptoms, to feel that life is not worth living, and in chronic cases, to take his own life.”

—Paul Robeson (sometime in the 1930’s),
             as quoted by Saul Williams from the book
             Paul Robes Speaks (see www.saulwilliams.com for more quotes).