It’s maybe paradoxical to revere an artform you also believe absolutely everyone should practice, and that the practicing of it is more important in some ways than mastery. I have my personal favorites that I revere, these almost angelic acts of virtuosity and genius– in dance, in literature, in any artform you can name– but it’s like, not everybody needs to direct a movie or record an album. We ALL need to move our bodies and we ALL need an experience of language that does some dignity to the great mystery of our even possessing this faculty– this magic thing– the word. This is a gift from the heavens that makes so much possible that we can’t even really understand yet. I feel a lot of what’s been happening in recent times has been calculated to make human beings embarrassed about the faculty of speech itself, and cowed from even experimenting with its power.

– Ariana Reines