I make charts of songs that are good candidates, good targets, so to speak. Then I try to come up with ideas for parodies. And 99% of those ideas are horrible.
A message came from my youth of vanished days, saying, 'I wait for you among the quivering of unborn May, where smiles ripen for tears and hours ache with songs unsung.' It says, 'Come to me across the worn-out track of age, through the gates of death. For dreams fade, hopes fail, the fathered fruits of the year decay, but I am the eternal truth, and you shall meet me again and again in your voyage of life from shore to shore.
The [book of the bible] Song Of Songs is an amazing erotic love poem that the church has tried very hard not to notice. It is really beautiful, and musical in its poetry.
There is the falsely mystical view of art that assumes a kind of supernatural inspiration, a possession by universal forces unrelated to questions of power and privilege or the artist's relation to bread and blood. In this view, the channel of art can only become clogged and misdirected by the artist's concern with merely temporary and local disturbances. The song is higher than the struggle.
I tend to write songs fast, so the process usually only lasts around 30 minutes. In the studio is where I really can artistically breathe, and let my ideas flow.
People were saying that Southern folk song was dead, that the land that had produced American jazz, the blues, the spirituals, the mountain ballads and the work songs had gone sterile.
If I had to collaborate with anybody on a song, I would pick Kendrick Lamar because he is so dope as an artist and I love his hustle and his passion. He is fearless and the way he comes to the music is like we share the same passion for what we do and with somebody from the West. In my opinion that would be a great collaboration.
I've been saying for almost 20 years that I need to do a jazz project and it ought to be either big band or I should do some jazz songs with a trio or quartet.
In the other gardens
And all up the vale,
From the autumn bonfies
See the smoke trail!
Pleasant summer over
And all the summer flowers,
The red fire blazes,
the grey smoke towers.
Sing a song of seasons!
Something bright in all,
Flowers in the summer
Fires in the fall!
Everything I do is about setting up for the next. I think that my confidence and belief in myself as well as the music and trusting my judgment of my songs really grew the most.
I never put myself in a box. I like to have various different types of songs and different genres and situational songs. No matter is going on, I have something for that time or era.
All power is God`s power; we are only vehicles. He pulsates in our hearts. He breathes through us. He sings a thousand and one songs through us. Sannyas means to let this understanding become the foundation of your life: We are not, God is. Let the ego disappear, evaporate, and you will find infinite contentment. With the ego there is only misery; without the ego there is only God; and God is bliss, and God is benediction, and God is ecstasy. Die to the ego so that God can live in you.