We've always been trying to climb this ladder that leans so hard on our own idea of what our big songs are. We realized recently that we're not a band with big songs.
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.
But now I have learned to listen to silence. To hear its choirs singing the song of ages, chanting the hymns of space, and disclosing the secrets of eternity.
Anyone who's got a guitar, you like to pick it up. I can play a couple of songs, some '50s rock and roll, a bit of Elvis. That's it, really - I'm not a musician, I'm not a singer.
Once again the songs of the fatherland roared to the heavens along the endless marching columns, and for the last time the Lord's grace smiled on His ungrateful children.
I remember how beautiful it was to fall asleep on your couch and cry in front of you for the first time.
You were the best platform from which to jump beyond myself.
What was wrong with me?
I shot an arrow into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where; For, so swiftly it flew, the sight Could not follow it in its flight. I breathed a song into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where; For who has sight so keen and strong, That it can follow the flight of song? Long, long afterward, in an oak I found the arrow, still unbroke; And the song, from beginning to end, I found again in the heart of a friend.
For many of us the march from Selma to Montgomery was about protest and prayer. Legs are not lips and walking is not kneeling. And yet our legs uttered songs. Even without words, our march was worship. I felt my legs were praying.
O Autumn, laden with fruit, and stained With the blood of the grape, pass not, but sit Beneath my shady roof; there thou may'st rest, And tune thy jolly voice to my fresh pipe; And all the daughters of the year shall dance! Sing now the lusty song of fruit and flowers.
The place that I worked I used to joke about it. There was a, every morning at 10:30 I'd come into work and I'd go into this cubicle that had a little upright piano and fake white cork bricks on the wall, and a little slate that came out of the wall that you could actually write on. And a door that locked from the outside. Every day from 10 to 6, we'd go in there and pretend that we were 13 year old girls and write these songs. That was the gig.