Creativity Quote by Gary Wright

There is a whole era hiding in the shrug of “as such.” Gary Wright’s line reads like a polite footnote to a myth, the kind that grows around musicians who brushed up against spiritual celebrity. Mention Ravi and plenty of listeners will supply the rest: sitars, incense, the long 1960s, the idea that real enlightenment could be acquired the way you acquire a new chord voicing. Wright punctures that narrative without getting combative. “We visited” keeps the encounter real and human; “We didn’t study with him” refuses the credential.

The specific intent feels defensive in the cleanest way: a correction, not a takedown. In music culture, proximity becomes prestige. Saying you “studied with Ravi” is shorthand for seriousness, authenticity, a passport into an East-meets-West lineage that still sells records and reputations. Wright’s phrasing suggests he’s seen how that shorthand gets abused, maybe even how it gets attached to him by interviewers who want a tidy origin story.

Subtext: the difference between inspiration and apprenticeship matters, and adults know it. Visiting a master can be meaningful without granting you mastery. The “as such” does extra work: it acknowledges a gray area (they learned something, surely) while declining the formal badge. It’s also a quiet bit of self-awareness about the scene itself, where spiritual seeking and aesthetic shopping sometimes blurred.

Contextually, the quote sits in the post-psychedelic hangover when artists started editing their own legends. Wright isn’t rejecting Ravi; he’s rejecting the inflated résumé. That restraint is its own kind of credibility.