Negombo, Sri Lanka

* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.

John Robin Baitz:  I was just thinking that you still manage to write with some kind of miraculous hope.

Athol Fugard:  You’ve got to.  Implicit in the act of creation on the part of the artist is:  I make it because I want to share it with you.  At the end of my process you are waiting for me… Pascal says “Imagine a cell in darkness and the inmates are shackled together.  Every morning at dawn, the door opens and the person at the end of the line is taken out and executed and the door is closed.  Those left behind read their fate in the opening and closing of the door every day.  it is a  metaphor of the human condition.”  That is Pascal.

Camus comes to that paragraph and says, “There is no question about it – that is an image of the human condition.  What do we do during those 24 hours between the opening and closing of the door?  Do we cry?  Or do we tap the next person in the chain and say ‘What’s your name?  I’m Athol Fugard.  Who are you?'”  And that’s how we create meaning.  At the end of the process you are waiting.  And that is the act of faith.  That is the hope that every artist has.    

Quoted by Anne Bogart in “and then you act:  making art in an unpredictable world”

Comments are welcome!