"Any serious attempt to try to do something worthwhile is ritualistic"
About this Quote
Walcott’s line is a quiet rebuke to the modern fantasy that good art arrives by “inspiration” and personal brand. “Ritualistic” isn’t a swipe at superstition; it’s a defense of discipline dressed in spiritual clothing. He’s saying that when you’re truly trying to make something that matters, you stop acting like a lone genius and start behaving like a practitioner: you return, you repeat, you submit to a set of forms that outlast your moods. The seriousness isn’t emotional intensity. It’s the willingness to be governed by process.
The subtext runs deeper for a Caribbean playwright and poet who spent his career negotiating inheritance: European literary canons, colonial languages, island histories, and the pressure to make a “new” culture out of fractured ones. Ritual is how communities keep meaning alive when institutions fail them; it’s also how an artist claims lineage without being swallowed by it. In Walcott’s work, art is labor, but it’s also ceremony - the stage as altar, the poem as offering - because creation is entangled with repair.
The phrasing “attempt to try” is almost comically redundant, and that redundancy matters. Walcott emphasizes effort over outcome, the repeated reaching rather than the triumphant arrival. Worthwhile things don’t just demand talent; they demand a practiced humility, the kind you learn only by showing up when you’d rather not. In an era that fetishizes productivity hacks, Walcott reminds you that the oldest “hack” is devotion.
The subtext runs deeper for a Caribbean playwright and poet who spent his career negotiating inheritance: European literary canons, colonial languages, island histories, and the pressure to make a “new” culture out of fractured ones. Ritual is how communities keep meaning alive when institutions fail them; it’s also how an artist claims lineage without being swallowed by it. In Walcott’s work, art is labor, but it’s also ceremony - the stage as altar, the poem as offering - because creation is entangled with repair.
The phrasing “attempt to try” is almost comically redundant, and that redundancy matters. Walcott emphasizes effort over outcome, the repeated reaching rather than the triumphant arrival. Worthwhile things don’t just demand talent; they demand a practiced humility, the kind you learn only by showing up when you’d rather not. In an era that fetishizes productivity hacks, Walcott reminds you that the oldest “hack” is devotion.
Quote Details
| Topic | Work Ethic |
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