There's the joke that we have as actors of the five stages of your career. There's who is Wendell Pierce? Get me Wendell Pierce. Get me someone like Wendell Pierce. Get me a younger Wendell Pierce. And then the last and final and fifth stages, who is Wendell Pierce?
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Everything had fallen away from him during those years: money, power, fame; nothing was certain for him anymore: not life, not health, not happiness; all had been called into question for him: vanity, ambition, relationships. Everything was reduced to bare existence. Burnt through with pain, everything that was not essential was melted down — the human being reduced to what he was in the last analysis: either a member of the masses, therefore no one real, so really no one — the anonymous one, a nameless thing (!), that "he" had now become, just a prisoner number; or else he melted right down to his essential self.
Viktor Frankl
The musicians who strike me as most authentic never realized that inauthenticity was even a choice—they wouldn't know how to arrive at that destination, even if you gave them a map and GPS coordinates. Discovering this kind of authenticity is a gift, but it's an unusual kind of gift—defined as much by what you relinquish, not what you gain.
Ted Gioia
The best rock stars, in my opinion, are the true believers who put themselves together for the sheer joy of inventing themselves.
Jeff Tweedy | Starship Casual