Birds Art Life: A Year of Observation
Kyo Maclear
Top 10 Best Quotes
“It is possible too that I was experiencing something known as "anticipatory grief," the mourning that occurs before a certain loss. Anticipatory. Expectatory. Trepidatory. This grief had a dampness. It did not drench or drown me, but it hung in the air like a pallid cloud, thinning but never entirely vanishing. It followed me wherever I went and gradually I grew used to looking at the world through it.”
“I like the idea of songs sung by those without big voices. You know, small birdsongs that rise above the noise of the city.”
“If you listen to birds, every day will have a song in it.”
“Sometimes we falter not because the ground beneath our feet is unstable but because it's exhausting to keep moving, to keep trying, to keep performing the same actions again and again.”
“One morning while standing at a café counter staring at the magnificently thick brows of the man making my coffee, I discovered one should not gaze too long at faces unless one is prepared to fall in love again. As I watched the warm air of the coffee machine steam his eyeglasses, as I noticed him squint behind the fog, as he made a flower pattern in the foam of my coffee, I felt overcome with love. Faces have a near-unwatchable intimacy, particularly in a world in which everything perishes in the end. It is difficult to look as we choose, without emotional consequence.”
“Ok. It's possible that birds may sing just for the joy of it.”
“Or maybe I discovered something more fundamental: worry is a constriction. A mind narrows when it has too much to bear. Art is not born of unwanted constriction. Art wants formless and spacious quiet, anti-social daydreaming, time away from the consumptive volume of everyday life.”
“There are moments when what we need, what will benefit us most, is the power to style our own stories.”
“On the satisfactions of small birds and small art and the audacity of aiming tiny in an age of big ambitions.”
“Now when I hear birdsong, I feel an entry to that understory. When I am feeling too squeezed on the ground, exhausted by everything in my care, I look for a little sky. There are always birds flying back and forth, city birds flitting around our human edges, singing their songs.”
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Book Keywords:
joy, struggle, cities, intimacy, small-things, depression, freedom, art, small, song, gratitude, satisfaction, nature, life, birds, anxiety, mindfulness, love, singing-with-your-heart, creativity, our-story, worry, ambition, birdsong
