Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The normal citizen looked at us and saw a mixture of gangster, hippy, criminal and ape. Once somebody rang us up with a nice voice and asked if they could do a feature article on us about how a commune works. They came and asked us questions, took our photos and disappeared. One week later the article appeared and it said: 'This kind of community stinks and if this is the future of Germany then we need Adolf back.'
Why be saddled with this thing called life expectancy? Of what relevance to an individual is such a statistic? Am I to concern myself with an allotment of days I never had and was never promised? Must I check off each day of my life as if I am subtracting from this imaginary hoard? No, on the contrary, I will add each day of my life to my treasure of days lived. And with each day, my treasure will grow, not diminish.
Lately I've been thinking about the idea that all novels are, at least in some way, about the process of writing a novel - that the construction of the book and the lineage of people constructing novels are always part of the story the author is telling. I think the equivalent for memoir should be that all memoirs are, in some way, about the process of memory. Memoirs are made out of a confusing, flawed act of creation.
It's more about when you come back from being out somewhere; in a minicab or a night bus, or with someone, or walking home across London late at night, dreamlike, and you've still got the music kind of echoing in you, in your bloodstream, but with real life trying to get in the way. I want it to be like a little sanctuary. It's like that 24-hour stand selling tea on a rainy night, glowing in the dark. It's pretty simple.
Many jazz musicians affect a misunderstood-genius air when they play, which alienates the audience and breaks down the communications of the music. A musician's responsibility is to get as much of his art across as possible. Musicians used to be kept when only the rich could afford art, but now practically everyone can afford radios, stereo equipment, concert tickets, etc. A musician must learn to communicate to survive.
Usually it's lyric first, but sometimes it's melody. And I carry a hand-held recorder everywhere I go so I can just hum or whistle a melody if one hits me. Sometimes it's both simultaneously - lyric and melody at the same time - those are a little confusing to me, but sometimes it comes in that form. I just feel like I have my own little radio station and sometimes the static clears and something beams in from out there.
I didn't mind writing incoherently, up until about 1980, occasionally. But after that, I decided, might as well be articulate. And I found, though, that writing poetry affected my prose to the point where I never again wrote in one draft, and my prose just took longer and longer and longer. It took longer and longer to come up with an acceptable text. And that's probably one of the reasons that my output has slowed down.
Do you wanna be a poet and write? Do you wanna be an actor up in lights? Do you wanna be soldier, and fight for love? Do you wanna travel the world? Do you wanna be a diver for pearls? Or climb the mountain, and touch the clouds above? Be anyone you want to be. Bring to life your fantasies. But I want something in return, I want you to burn, burn for me, baby. Like a candle in the night. Oh burn, burn for me, burn for me.
I would tell a newly diagnosed young woman that breast cancer is a complex disease which can be frightening and confusing, and it's normal to experience these emotions, and having a good support system is important. Be an active participant in your treatment, follow your doctor's instructions and ask questions. Also, I would tell her that there have been many advances in breast cancer and women are now living much longer.
God's righteousness and His unchangeable law make Christianity a stumbling block for many. Organizations and individuals carry a political and moral agenda that aims to remove all obstacles to their sin. Their goal is to 'break God's bands asunder and cast away His cords.' They counsel together to rid themselves of the law of God; anyone who preaches the gospel or stands for righteousness stands in the way of their agenda.
I think the idea of being on stage and playing for people, and being able to inject a little bit of joy into their lives is a really exciting concept for me. That's definitely why I make music. It's never been for any kind of materialistic reasons, so that thought of being able to be up on stage, and being able to give something to someone in a moment of need for them - that gets me up in the morning; that really excites me.
Walter Benjamin talks about art losing its original "aura" in an age of mechanical reproduction. In writing memoir, we're taking something that happened in a particular moment and meant something at that time, and we're trying to capture it to mass reproduce it for readers. So of course something is lost. And when we edit that material, we're getting even further from that aura, but toward something else that is potentially vital.
I've always just felt like an outsider. I've always been made fun of in school ever since kindergarten. For me, when I started singing, that's when I started making "friends,". That's when people started taking an interest in me. That was the thing that made me likable, I guess. Maybe even lovable! I think that's really why I'm so hellbent on doing this as a career is because those are the moments where I felt at my most confident.
Searching for a better description of this rotting sadness, I came upon the concept of acedia. In Christian theology, it’s an antecedent to sloth, the least sexy of the seven deadly sins. Thomas Aquinas winnowed it down for me: acedia is sorrow so complete that the flesh prevails completely over the spirit. You don’t just turn your back on the world, you turn your back on God. You don’t care, and you don’t care that you don’t care.
I feel like a lot of people look at pop music with a very formulaic perspective in numbers and patterns, but an outsider would think that the process is very natural. It is, but there are a lot of times where people treat it like a sport - there are tricks you can pull, different combinations that make something better. I don't really think I approach it that way, but I definitely have a love for the science that is pop song writing.
I think I've always been extremely conscious of the kind of empowerment that comes from realizing that you're in a position to express yourself. And the fact is that - and this is the thing about punk rock - that everyone is in a position to create culture, and that point has never been lost on me. To me, that's an important political aspect of doing this, and trying to live in a way that's about dialogue as opposed to like... spectacle.
Sally Barris has a voice like sparkling crystal. You could have knocked me over with a feather the first time I heard her. Her writing is from a deep, yet innocent, place and her point of view is just a bit off center. I am excited for her, she is standing at the beginning of her journey in this town, with all of it ahead of her. It reminds me of the first time I heard Beth Nielson-Chapman or Nanci Griffith. It's going to be fun to watch.
A professional entertainer who allows himself to become known as a singer of folk songs is bound to have trouble with his conscience provided, of course, that he possesses one. As a performing artist, he will pride himself on timing and other techniques designed to keep the audience in his control ... his respect for genuine folklore reminds him that these changes, and these techniques, may give the audience a false picture of folk music.
The band and I were leading at a Youth Specialties convention. We were asked to back up Matt Maher for one of the sessions. Matt handed us the chord charts and, with less than 5 minutes of practice, we were playing it live. I fell in love with this song immediately. You can't hear the message of God's sufficient grace too many times. Matt is a great lead worshiper and is a part of Life Teen, a growing worship movement in the Catholic Church.
I am glad I am an optimist. The pessimist is half-licked before he starts. The optimist has won half the battle, the most important half that applies to himself, when he begins his approach to a subject with the proper mental attitude. The optimist may not understand, or if he understands he may not agree with, prevailing ideas; but he believes, yes, knows, that in the long run and in due course there will prevail whatever is right and best.
Isn't it interesting that in Acts 11, at the end of verse 26, it says, "The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch." What I find interesting is the simple thought that the Christians didn't name themselves. But rather, they were called (or named) "Christians" by those watching their lives. I wonder if it would be the same today. Could someone look at your life or look at my life and name me a Christian? A humbling thought for sure.
The best way to neutralise fear is by laughing. You can see the dynamics of this in action when people watch a horror movie. You'll notice that immediately after a good fright, following the sceams of terror - which is the point of maximum experience of fear - people will always laugh immediately afterward, as this is the natural way to release the fear. By laughing at something you also take away the perception that it has any power over you.
I think utopianism and eschatology are really two sides of the same coin. They both assume that some massively transformative event is going to happen that's going to completely change the nature of society. They only disagree on whether we get a happy ending or all die horribly. And so utopianism is on the wane right now because at the moment most of the plausible candidates for huge historical transformation look like they're going to kill us.
The reason why so many of my photographs in the book were taken in stairwells and corridors was that that was the only bit of spare space available and, in some cases, the only place where there was enough light to see anything. Even then, it was often so dark that I couldn't tell which gender my subject was (not that I particularly cared) and too dark, before the era of autofocus, to focus. I had to find a light (or carry a torch) and pre-focus.
I can't describe it in words, but I can see it in my head, its color, its light, its shapes, and I've managed to synthesize my love for myself by way of many different reasonings and processes, and I've been able to really synthesize my own satisfaction and things that do it for me. They've usually been self-taught, self-instructed, self-refined. So to be with anybody else has to somewhat lie in that comfort zone I've created with myself so well.
I enjoy writing songs that could have been written before [my time]. When I feel like I'm tapping into a deep vein in the body of American music, it gives me strength as a writer, like I'm dipping my pen into a deep ink well. That's the folk music tradition. Like Pete Seeger said, 'Everyone's a link in the chain.' It's a strong chain, so rely on it. ... I believe it takes all those great songs in the past to make your song even a little bit good.
There is a string attached to Maia Sharp's voice. And when she sings, you find that the other end is attached to your gut. Her voice is lush and sensual and the emotions she articulates resonate with the small feelings we have that sometimes are hard to face..there is an edge to her songs, but also a softness...she is lyrical and conversational at the same time. Her CD was the only one in my machine for a month. Her work inspires me to dig deeper.
I just feel like it's easier to co-write sometimes, especially if you have chemistry with somebody. It kind of takes all the pressure off of you. But, you know, I started writing songs by myself. I didn't really have a co-writer, besides my dad. When I see a record and it has a song on it that someone wrote [alone], I just really believe in them as a writer. I feel like it's a window into them, more than it is if you write a song with someone else.
If I looked at some of these pieces as if this project was not spoken-word but just short anthology, I probably would have fussed with some of the sentences, you know? Syllabication and prosody and such crap. Because the printed word is etched in stone. But for reading purposes I accepted this book of texts in the manner in which I wrote them, no need to fuss. Most of the shorter stuff was written as poetry. Meaning lots of white space on the page.
Basically, I've reached the point where I've lost any direct relationship to any of the editors I used to have. I suspect I'll have to pay to publish this myself, and I think a lot about about putting out fifty copies. I used to think about hogwash like my legacy and silly things like that. But I feel like if I never have another book out, I've done okay, I've had like twelve or thirteen little books, and I won't be upset about this on my death bed.
I can't stress enough how important it is to write bad songs. There's a lot of people who don't want to finish songs because they don't think they're any good. Well they're not good enough. Write it! I want you to write me the worst songs you could possible write me because you won't write bad songs. You're thinking they're bad so you don't have to finish it. That's what I really think it is. Well it's all right. Well, how do you know? It's not done!
Brother woke just after midnight and he didn't make a sound, and as he climbed from out of bed with severed rings around his head, his feet didn't touch the ground. I could feel it then-a tiny miracle-so I followed him into the woods, crossed beneath the trees but only I left my prints in tow, he was afloat. He found a lonely tree and tied himself within its limbs, and he said to me these words: 'Don't you fear for me, I am where I'm supposed to be.'
Whatever prestige the bourgeoisie may today be willing to grant to fragmentary or deliberately retrograde artistic tentatives, creation can now be nothing less than a synthesis aiming at the construction of entire atmospheres and styles of life. . . . A unitary urbanism — the synthesis we call for, incorporating arts and technologies — must be created in accordance with new values of life, values which we now need to distinguish and disseminate. . . .
I'm not really sure why so much people still listen us. I think we live in an era when people get attached to stuff, and it means something. Then I think a lot of people heard about it over the years - like somebody's older brother might tell them, you know, because we're from his era, and he might be like, "You need to listen to this; this is what it's all about," you know what I mean? I don't know, man, it's hard to say. But it makes us feel special.
Each day, awakening, are we asked to paint the sky blue? Need we coax the sun to rise or flowers to bloom? Need we teach birds to sing, or children to laugh, or lovers to kiss? No, though we think the world imperfect, it surrounds us each day with its perfections. We are asked only to appreciate them, and to show appreciation by living in peaceful harmony amidst them. The Creator does not ask that we create a perfect world; He asks that we celebrate it.
When I first saw Destiny's Child, I was in the fifth grade, and it made me want to sing and make music and there would be these freestyles on the radio for what seemed like hours, it was just so cool to me. So all of these influences and these styles started to blend together. Eventually, that evolved into me finding the indie scene in Houston. When I was 19, I joined a rock band, and that's when I began to say, "Okay, this is something that I could take seriously."
Never underestimate a girl’s love for her favorite band. Never think even for a minute, that she won’t defend them to her death. Because it’s not just the music that makes that band her favorite. It’s the guys, the gals. It’s the fans. People whom of which she has interacted with thanks to the band. That band might of saved her life, or just made her smile everyday. That band has never broke her heart and has yet to leave her. No wonder she finds such joy in her music.
I think that I would really like at first for the art to speak for itself. I don't see the need for a lot of personal information about my past or who I am. I would rather the personal side of it just be in the concepts and the genuine feelings that I filter through my work. I know that it's inevitable that people can find whatever they want about me. Once I've had a chance to create a language and a world with my art, then I'm more comfortable sharing that information.
It's more about subtracting every single buck from the tourists that still flock there. Gentrification and the need for developers to maximize their profits from every square inch of the place means that there just aren't any scruffy little basement clubs left. Those scruffy little basement clubs were the areas lifeblood. Now, it's all penthouse flats and global brands. They destroyed the very thing that drew people there in the first place - it's superficial sleaziness.
With a live music performance, the ideas of the richness and complexity of our inner and outer worlds - the emotional world and the external world, like the planets, the weather, and the universe are really washing over you. Your body feels the intention more than your mind analyzing intellectually too much. I've always tried to do this in my music, to make it very direct and bodily, so that it communicates itself immediately, even to someone without prior knowledge of it.
I'm so honored to be on this recording with Ann & Nancy Wilson. They are iconic and I've truly been one of their biggest fans since I was a kid. And what a perfect song to sing with them, since I adore Vince Gill and have been very proud for his commitment to his own musical vision. When we were recording at Nancy's house, and even though I'm friends with those girls now, I had to keep 'pinching' myself and marvel at how blessed my life is! It was a very PROUD moment for me.
In all honesty I think, sometimes with the LGBT community, if you look at anything else surrounding it, there's always been this oddness and sense of humor. I really appreciate that. It's kind of a hard world to take yourself too seriously. It's a good balance check. It's not serious all the time. I'm that way too, even though I write a lot of depressing music. A lot of times our shows are not very serious at all. We joke a lot and then we play a sad song and then we joke again.
George Jones has been a major part of my personal and professional life for a long time. I have been inspired by his music for the last 50 years and for 42 of those, I had the pleasure of knowing him personally and professionally. He was IT to me. George was and will always be my guy. I am luckier than a lot of people on this Earth because God let me be a part of George's life and him a part of mine. And on this day, his song couldn't be more true: 'He Stopped Loving Her Today.'
When I was doing mainly music, I used to stick a microphone out the window, into the countryside, and create a live mix. I wanted to put air in electronic music. I record the sounds of twigs, barks, and stones. I've always been obsessed with the idea of combining the natural and the man-made. It's not because I think the technology is crap, or that I'm trying to work against it, but that juxtaposition is truly beautiful. The question of what is natural and unnatural is very open.
First Corinthians so clearly says that whether we eat or drink, do it all to the glory of God. It's not just self. Jesus said ... in Matthew 16, 'Deny yourself, take up your cross and follow Me.' The Osteens have just inverted that. They think it's not the denial of self, but the exaltation of self. They're not trying to pursue a cross; they're trying to pursue prosperity. And they're certainly not following the biblical Jesus. They're following whatever brings happiness and contentment.
I get so much energy and I learn so much through collaborating with other people. Ultimately, I think the best music will always be created through collaborations - pooling together skills to create something bigger than any individual. I like to use my own SOPHIE material to present ideas in their most extreme, un-compromised form. I really use those opportunities to express exactly where I'm at in terms of production and writing ideas, as a document of my thoughts and feelings, as well.
It can be difficult going through a period of time where you feel depressed because it can become your identifier. In the sense that you wake up, you're depressed; you talk to your friends, you're complaining that you're depressed; you talk to your parents, you're unmotivated. You know what you could do to try to overcome it - although obviously there's no cure - but you start to feel like, 'what will happen to me if I feel better? Who am I when I'm happy. I'm so used to feeling like this.'
I find flying interesting in that it's a very intimate experience. You're so close, physically, to one or two other people and you eat, sleep, do everything together. I've met the most extraordinary people on planes, some of whom I've stayed in touch with, some I haven't. Even if you're beside someone who ignores you for eight hours, there's a physicality you wouldn't put up with from anyone other than someone you knew well. You're in it together, even if you never say a word to one another.
Without doubt, the foremost band for decades has been the One O'Clock Lab Band at the University of North Texas. Through its many incarnations and under various leaders, they have demonstrated the highest qualities of musicianship imaginable, plus a willingness to balance their big band tradition with creative exploration. Astounding ensemble work, insightful interpretations of the arrangements, imaginative writing, and above all, a loving attention to musicality . . . these people play beautifully.
When compiling his great dictionary, the young Noah Webster travels to the Himalayas, where he climbs to the cave of the world's wises man. 'O, great sage,' he says, 'tell me the meaning of life.' The sage sits Noah at his feet and, with great solemnity, commences to unfold the meaning of life. When finished, he places a hand on the young man's shoulder and says, 'Do you have any other questions, my son?' Noah flips a page in his notebook and says, 'You wouldn't know the meaning of lift, would you?'