Creativity Quote by George Shearing

There is a sly self-awareness in Shearing’s phrasing: “affiliation” sounds like paperwork, not patriotism. He sidesteps the syrupy language of roots and belonging and instead offers something cooler, almost administrative. For a musician who spent much of his life outside Britain, that choice matters. It frames national identity as a lived practice rather than a permanent tattoo: you don’t have to perform loyalty daily; you just have to keep showing up.

“Borne out by the fact” is doing quiet defensive work. It implies an unspoken challenge - maybe from interviewers, maybe from the broader suspicion that success abroad equals cultural desertion. Shearing answers with evidence, not emotion: periodic visits as proof-of-life, a stamp in the passport standing in for a flag on the lapel. The understatement is distinctly British, but it’s also the voice of someone who knows how public narratives get written about expatriates: either you’re a proud ambassador or a traitor to the old neighborhood. He refuses both scripts.

The line also carries a musician’s touring logic. Home becomes a rhythm section you drop back into between gigs, not a single stage you never leave. “Periodic” is key - it suggests routine, maintenance, a return that’s reliable but not confining. In a career built on transatlantic jazz circuits and cosmopolitan rooms, Shearing makes belonging sound like a set of recurring bookings: not sentimental, not severed, just ongoing.