I was reading something and saw the following lines spoken by an old male artist:
船が、水の下の者どもに気を配っていて大海原を往けるだろうか?
芸術も、人生も、しょせん水もの…
水をこざいて浮き上がった者だけが勝つのだ!
Someone else then responds:
キレイな言葉でボヤかしてやがるが、『他人なんて踏み台だ』って意味じゃねーか。
This was all overlaid upon the following image:
I have no idea what 水をこざく means. The only thing I can find is maybe it's dialectal, but that doesn't seem to make sense because if you're walking/treading (歩く) in water are you really 浮き上がる (floating) on top of water? What kind of image am I supposed to be seeing here?