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" Children frequently sing meaningful phrases to themselves over and over again before they learn to make a distinction between singing and saying. "
David Antin
Saying
Over
Learn
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" While I don't script and I don't use other performers, I think my taste for underlying precision gives me something in common with Allan and George Brecht. "
David Antin
Use
Think
Common
" Stories are different every time you tell them - they allow so many possible narratives. "
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You
Different
Possible
" My way of thinking is very particular and concrete. It doesn't follow a continuous path. "
David Antin
Way
Thinking
Path
" I've always had a strong feeling for the Statue of Liberty, because it became the statue of my personal liberty. "
David Antin
Feeling
Strong
Always
" I hardly remember how I started to write poetry. It's hard to imagine what I thought poetry could do. "
David Antin
Remember
Poetry
Thought
" I reserve the right to tell shaggy dog stories or even common jokes as part of what I'm doing. I don't give a damn if half the audience walks out. "
David Antin
Damn
Doing
Dog
" I learned enough Hebrew to stagger through a meaningless ceremony that I scarcely remember. "
David Antin
Through
Remember
Meaningless
" My rejection of the idea of entertainment in its current form is based on the audience that comes with it. "
David Antin
Entertainment
Rejection
Idea
" I was trying to find out what it was that everybody else understood without giving up my stubborn and hard-won lack of understanding. "
David Antin
Understanding
Giving
Trying
" The Sophists' paradoxical talk pieces and their public debates were entertainment in 5th century Greece. And in that world, Socrates was an entertainer. "
David Antin
World
Entertainment
Greece
" I can manage a prose format as long as I keep closer to Laurence Sterne than to Henry James. "
David Antin
Than
I Can
Closer
" While I've had a great distaste for what's usually called song in modern poetry or for what's usually called music, I really don't think of speech as so far from song. "
David Antin
Far
Song
Poetry
" I have spoken to expert audiences occasionally, but then no audience is expert over the whole range of things I want to explore. "
David Antin
Want
Expert
Audience
" For several centuries what has passed for song in literary circles was any text that looked like the lyrics for a commonplace melodic setting. "
David Antin
Like
Any
Lyrics
" The self is an oral society in which the present is constantly running a dialogue with the past and the future inside of one skin. "
David Antin
Past
Self
Society
" I'm aware of my audience in a way, and I do try to engage with them while I'm trying to go about my business of thinking. I believe they help me by providing a focus. "
David Antin
Thinking
Believe
Help
" When I got to the reading all the work, I was reduced to being an actor in an experimental play that I'd already written. And I didn't want to be an actor. "
David Antin
Reading
Actor
Work
" I had no idea where these kids at a small private college in the San Fernando Valley were coming from, why they were coming to hear me, or what they needed to know. "
David Antin
College
Valley
Know
" From this entertainment industry, may the gods of language protect us. "
David Antin
Entertainment
Protect
Us
" Disney made a fortune out of inventing the businessman's idea of the imaginary as the contradictory of the businessman's idea of the real. "
David Antin
Out
Fortune
Businessman
" I tended to emphasize the secular, the casual, the colloquial, the vernacular against the sacred. "
David Antin
Secular
Casual
Sacred
" It's hard being a hostage in somebody else's mouth - or a character in somebody else's novel. "
David Antin
Somebody
Being
Character
" I wanted to be an inventor, whatever I thought that meant then. I guess I was thinking of Edison or maybe James Watt. Or maybe even Newton. "
David Antin
Thought
Thinking
Maybe
" I'm not sure what theory is, unless it's the pursuit of fundamental questions. "
David Antin
Sure
Questions
Pursuit
" My mother turned into a professional widow. She couldn't understand why I wanted to be an engineer; she thought I should be a chicken farmer. "
David Antin
Thought
Mother
Professional
" When my mother left her second husband, she wrote her autobiography and presented it to him for his approval. "
David Antin
Him
Husband
Mother
" When you grow up in a family of languages, you develop a kind of casual fluency, so that languages, though differently colored, all seem transparent to experience. "
David Antin
Experience
Family
Grow
" The ancient Greek oral poets all had this anxiety about the deficiencies of their memories and always began poems by praying to the Muse to help them remember. "
David Antin
Muse
Remember
Anxiety
" You pay your money, you take your choice. I get the audience my language attracts and I lose the ones it repels. "
David Antin
Lose
Money
Language
" I'm standing up thinking. Anybody who wants to listen is welcome. If not, I'm happy to see them go. "
David Antin
Happy
Listen
Thinking