As for what I listen to after writing, it could be anything - but I've noticed that if the current book contains music from one tradition, it is music from another tradition that most relaxes me.
I've been through the entire gamut of the music industry - I've been playing in clubs since I was 14, and I've been on Warner Bros, on Sony - I've had lots of successes and some serious times of struggle.
Growing up in Memphis and listening to all kinds of music and dreaming... So that was one of the first times I wrote a complete song and set it to music and the whole bit. From then on, I was busy with it.
Once you've changed who you are or who you've portrayed in your music, the fans, they'll catch it... Once I feel like the world knows me for anything else but my music, then I feel like I failed.
I've just had a wonderful time doing Chinese music, and it's been so rewarding for me. I feel like there's so much potential in mandarin music, and there's so much, you know, ground left to be broken.
When you're trying to bring the streets into rap to prove a point, then you already lost. You separate the two, and that ain't to be played with. You've got people that lost their lives and people that are doing real time. If we gon' make music, let'...
I don't like to define my music. To me, music is pure emotion. It's language that can communicate certain emotions and the rhythms cuts across genders, cultures and nationalities. All you need to do is close your eyes and feel those emotions.
The way I create music is maybe like a painting, to compose in a more visual way. Basically it's the music that I want to hear- that's my inspiration and bottom line. I just try to get ideas from books, movies, paintings.
To me, movies and music go hand in hand. When I'm writing a script, one of the first things I do is find the music I'm going to play for the opening sequence.
I loved old black and white movies, especially the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals. I loved everything about them - the songs, the music, the romance and the spectacle. They were real class and I knew that I wanted to be in that world.
Antonio Salieri: [about Emperor Joseph II's musical tastes] Actually, the man had no ear at all. But what did it matter. He adored my music.
I started out really into musical theater. So you can imagine I was super popular. I wasn't awkward looking at all.
I came to musical theatre from straight acting, and a lot of my friends have a real prejudice about musical theatre - one I probably shared.
I really think that the 'Jersey Boys' musical - and this is just my opinion - lends itself to being cinematic in some way, because it's a jukebox musical; the characters break into song only for the scene transitions.
People fall into patterns at fast speeds, when really, to have a clear musical thought - the kind of musical thought that makes a melody work - our brains just can't think that fast. At a certain point, you're going on automatic.
We do not have to spend money and go hungry and struggle and study to become sensual; we always were. We need not believe we must somehow earn good erotic care; we always deserved it. Femaleness and its sexuality are beautiful. Women have long secret...
Beauty is the purgation of superfluities.
The Ferrari is a beautiful car. It's great.
Lead us toward a speech, which is as beautiful as silence, and toward a silence, which is as beautiful as the sweetest and truest of words. (119)
When you can look into the mirror and see yourself as the beautiful woman I do, then I'll know I've given you the one gift no one can ever take away.
They were just the ordinary sounds of of people beginning their day, silly raucous, discordant, but they were the most beautiful sounds on earth, the sounds of living people.
