William Butler
William Butler
Multi-instrumentalist for the band Arcade Fire who plays bass, synth, guitar, and percussion. He has also worked on movie soundtracks, like the one for Her.
ProfessionGuitarist
Date of Birth6 October 1982
art brain world
Art bids us touch and taste and hear and see the world, and shrinks from what Blake calls mathematic form, from every abstract form, from all that is of the brain only.
heaven tragedy scene
Heaven blazing into the head: Tragedy wrought to its uttermost. Though Hamlet rambles and Lear rages And all the drop-scenes drop at once Upon a hundred thousand stages It cannot grow by an inch or an ounce.
doors air southern
There are a few of the open-air spirits; the more domestic of their tribe gather within-doors, plentiful as swallows under southern eaves.
men shade floats
Before me floats an image, man or shade, / Shade more than man, more image than a shade...
believe brain body
We only believe in those thoughts which have been conceived not in the brain but in the whole body.
theme
What can I but enumerate old themes?
children sleep storm
Once more the storm is howling, and half hid Under this cradle-hood and coverlid My child sleeps on.
moving long silence
Like a long-legged fly upon the stream / His mind moves upon silence.
running imagination what-if
Bid imagination run / Much on the Great Questioner; / What He can question, what if questioned I / Can with a fitting confidence reply.
art perfection flying
All art is in the last analysis an endeavor to condense as out of the flying vapor of the world an image of human perfection, and for its own and not for the art's sake.
wise patience needs
Time can but make it easier to be wise / Though now it seems impossible, and so / All that you need is patience.
plato eye imagination
It seems that I must bid the Muse to pack, / Choose Plato and Plotinus for a friend / Until imagination, ear and eye, / Can be content with argument and deal / In abstract things; or be derided by / A sort of battered kettle at the heel.
religious art age
Supreme art is a traditional statement of certain heroic and religious truth, passed on from age to age, modified by individual genius, but never abandoned.
winning battle lost
I Sing what was lost and dread what was won, / I walk in a battle fought over again...