The forest is peaceful, why aren’t you? You hold on to things causing your confusion. Let nature teach you. Hear the bird’s song then let go. If you know nature, you’ll know truth. If you know truth, you’ll know nature.
Of little use, the man you may suppose,
Who says in verse what others say in prose;
Yet let me show a poet's of some weight,
And (though no soldier) useful to the state,
What will a child learn sooner than a song?
What better teach a foreigner the tongue?
What's long or short, each accent where to place
And speak in public with some sort of grace?
I write about what I know and what I've experienced. That's the only way it can be real to me. I love songwriting. There is something so satisfying in coming up with an idea and turning it into a song that means something to people.
People want to listen to a message, word from Jah. This could be passed through me or anybody. I am not a leader. Messenger. The words of the songs, not the person, is what attracts people.
Who is the best rapper ever? I'll probably have to say Eminem. I would definitely say Eminem. He came from a whole another culture, literally. Mastered it, outsold everybody and he did every kind of record imaginable. He could take any topic and make a song out of it. I haven't seen any artist do that yet.
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 cut my teeth playing rock songs on the accordion when I was a teenager and my friends always thought that was extremely amusing. I think that was the genesis of my polka medleys, because every rock song I played on the accordion just sounded like a polka and my friends thought it was funny. So that was a joke that I continue up to this very day.
I'm a human being just like you are. And I hurt and love just like everybody else, and people tend to forget that. I think I'm one of the friendliest celebrities around, because I'll stop to talk to anybody who recognizes me. I don't have a negative bone in my body. That's why I could care less about any gossip. It doesn't interest me. I'd rather sit down and write a song.
Sport is the bloom and glow of a perfect health. The great will not condescend to take anything seriously; all must be as gay as the song of a canary, though it were the building of cities, or the eradication of old and foolish churches and nations, which have cumbered the earth long thousands of years.
I just find that with music I've always felt a sort of comfort."Paranoid Android" was the saddest song I'd ever heard in my life, but it felt so good - it was like, "Oh, you understand where I'm coming from." I was at a weird age at the time, in a hardcore band that had no melody, no chance of finding any success, and I was just trying to figure out what the hell I was going to do with my life. And that came out and changed my life forever - on an artistic level, and a lyrical level, for sure.
Sometimes I'm trying to communicate a feeling. Sometimes I can't piece it together into any kind of coherant thesis. I'm just trying to evoke some kind of mood, and put some kind of idea in somebody's head. If Marshall McLuhan or Harold Innis were looking at it, they would tell you that the genre of rock music isn't the best way to deliver a political message because it distorts it, it makes it into entertainment. Perhaps the best political message is just to speak it to somebody. I think that's something I'm always writing about in songs, just how to mediate, how to present something.
Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rims at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen?
Now the bright morning-star, Day's harbinger,
Comes dancing from the East, and leads with her
The flowery May, who from her green lap throws
The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose.
Hail, bounteous May, that dost inspire
Mirth, and youth, and warm desire!
Woods and groves are of thy dressing;
Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing.
Thus we salute thee with our early song,
And welcome thee, and wish thee long.