Meredith Monk (b. 1942)
- That inner voice has both gentleness and clarity. So to get to authenticity, you really keep going down to the bone, to the honesty, and the inevitability of something.
- I think about that ’empty” space a lot. That emptiness is what allows for something to actually evolve in a natural way. I’ve had to learn that over the years – because one of the traps of being an artist is to always want to be creating, always wanting to produce.
- I have always believed that we all have male and female within us.
- Sometimes in the past when I was going to perform a piece again I would listen to old recordings and try to reproduce the material. This time I realized that carrying around old information, trying to get everything in, and still be in the moment just doesn’t work.
- I somehow sensed when I was a teenager that I wanted to do my own work. I was quite clear that I didn’t want to be an interpretative kind of artist. I had an intuition about wanting to create my own form, in one way or another, whatever that would be.
- The more I go through life I realize that there’s really no separation between practice and art at all. The two things more and more become one rather than two different aspects of my life.
- I’ve never had an empty house. Ever.
- When you start worrying about form, then you’re not in the moment.
- It’s been a continuity right from the beginning — that longing to weave together perceptions, to affirm the richness of us as human beings both as performers and audience members.
- As artists, I think that one of the good qualities we have is that we’re imaginative. We’re resourceful. We like challenges.
- When I’m an audience member I do not want to go and see something that I already know, I want to see something that I don’t know. I want to be surprised and stimulated to think about something. I want the magic. I want to be in a situation of uncertainty; that’s what excites me.