Art & Creativity Quote by Lara St. John

Lara St. John is doing two things at once: staking a claim for music as something weighty, and pushing back against the quietly ageist, gendered way culture talks about women performers. The opening chain - "Music is art, art is life" - is a maximalist mantra, the kind artists use when theyre tired of treating their work like content. It flattens the hierarchy between the stage and the rest of existence: if art is life, then you dont retire from it like you retire from a job. You age into it.

The phrase "we are who we are" signals identity as destiny, but St. John slips in a crucial escape hatch: "unless they should choose not to". That clause is the whole political argument in miniature. Its not that these women will perform forever because the market will allow it or because audiences will keep them young; its that endurance is an artistic right, and stepping away should be framed as agency, not obsolescence.

Context matters: classical and pop both have a history of venerating male longevity while treating female longevity as either novelty or problem. St. Johns insistence on "aforementioned women" reads like a defense brief responding to some prior dismissal - a panel, a review, a cultural shrug. Even the slightly breathless run-on structure works: it feels spoken, urgent, a refusal to tidy the thought for decorum. The point lands plainly: greatness isnt a phase, and real artists dont come with an expiration date.