"We are getting an education of a lifetime. We're actually out there in the real world"
About this Quote
The line reframes learning as a lived apprenticeship rather than a classroom credential. Calling it an "education of a lifetime" suggests a curriculum that never ends, one written by mistakes, travel, collaboration, and the relentless feedback of audiences and markets. "We" broadens the scope beyond the speaker to a community of peers who are hustling, touring, building projects, and finding their voices outside institutional walls. The real world becomes both teacher and test.
Solange Knowles has built her career on precisely that kind of experiential study. She entered the music industry young, wrote and performed across wildly different contexts, founded Saint Records to own her masters and shape her aesthetic environment, and crafted albums that double as statements of identity and agency. Each step required fluency in contracts, creative direction, and public scrutiny, none of which fits neatly into a syllabus. The knowledge gained from negotiating artistic control, recovering from setbacks, and protecting vulnerability in a commercial arena is a distinct form of literacy, often invisible to formal education.
There is no contempt for schooling here so much as a re-centering of embodied knowledge. The studio, the stage, the tour bus, and the neighborhood are classrooms too. The "real world" is liberating because it lets artists test ideas against reality, but it is also unforgiving, demanding resilience and self-definition. That tension animates Solange’s work, which treats black womanhood, Southern heritage, and community care as both subject matter and method. The lessons are about craft, yes, but also about boundaries, ownership, and the politics of visibility.
By saying "we are getting" rather than "we have gotten", the voice stays present and humble, acknowledging that mastery is provisional. The education is collective, recursive, and practical. It asks for curiosity, for attention to the people who show up to help, and for the courage to treat lived experience as legitimate scholarship.
Solange Knowles has built her career on precisely that kind of experiential study. She entered the music industry young, wrote and performed across wildly different contexts, founded Saint Records to own her masters and shape her aesthetic environment, and crafted albums that double as statements of identity and agency. Each step required fluency in contracts, creative direction, and public scrutiny, none of which fits neatly into a syllabus. The knowledge gained from negotiating artistic control, recovering from setbacks, and protecting vulnerability in a commercial arena is a distinct form of literacy, often invisible to formal education.
There is no contempt for schooling here so much as a re-centering of embodied knowledge. The studio, the stage, the tour bus, and the neighborhood are classrooms too. The "real world" is liberating because it lets artists test ideas against reality, but it is also unforgiving, demanding resilience and self-definition. That tension animates Solange’s work, which treats black womanhood, Southern heritage, and community care as both subject matter and method. The lessons are about craft, yes, but also about boundaries, ownership, and the politics of visibility.
By saying "we are getting" rather than "we have gotten", the voice stays present and humble, acknowledging that mastery is provisional. The education is collective, recursive, and practical. It asks for curiosity, for attention to the people who show up to help, and for the courage to treat lived experience as legitimate scholarship.
Quote Details
| Topic | Learning |
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