Zitat des Tages von Tracy Chapman:
There's a time and place for everything, and my focus is music. So that's what I prefer to spend most of my time doing, and not talk about making music.
I end up writing about all kinds of things. I never make an attempt to write about anything in particular. I don't have a little list of topics to write about.
I see some recurring themes: things that feel threaded together, some symbolic references, and songs about some of the big questions, like death. There are a lot of references to weather, too!
I learn all these things about the record talking about it after it's finished.
I always considered trying to make a living playing music. But it was always really clear to me, at the various stages in my life, that it really wasn't a possibility unless some phenomenal thing happened.
The songs are not necessarily autobiographical. A lot of songs are a combination of influences. It might be some part of my life, or something I've felt, or something somebody's told me. It all comes together.
I'm still thinking and hoping there's an opportunity for people to have better lives and that significant change can occur.
I may be revered or defamed and decried; But I tried to live my life right.
We all must live our lives always feeling, always thinking the moment has arrived.
I had a ukulele when I was much younger. I have no idea what happened to it but I think that was part of it, just being inspired and wanting to try to play an instrument that, to me, sounded beautiful.
Songwriting is a very mysterious process. It feels like creating something from nothing. It's something I don't feel like I really control.
Everyone is looking for connections between the songs. I don't usually approach a record as a concept. There's no overriding theme I'm trying to represent. It's all about the individual songs.
My older sister encouraged me from early on and bought me one of the first guitars I had. She listened to all of the crappy songs that I wrote when I was 8 years old and encouraged me to keep doing it.
That's what everyone should do with their lives: stand up for what they believe in or try to do some good in the world. I don't think artists have a greater responsibility than anyone else.
After it's finished, sometimes I can trace a path that goes back to the possible source of inspiration.
As you might imagine, I'm approached by lots of organizations and lots of people who want me to support their various charitable efforts in some way. And I look at those requests, and I basically try to do what I can.
At this point in my life I'd like to live as if only love mattered.
I often write either really early in the morning, or really late at night.
As I started to consider a career in music, I hoped for success, truthfully. I didn't imagine anything that would amass the level of the first record, but I hoped that I would be able to sustain a career.
With other people, you're always swapping music. Somebody is always listening to something you've never heard. It's a great way to hear all sorts of new things.
I won't get into it any more than to say that there are parts of me in all the songs that I write.
I found myself in the middle of a race riot when I was about 14 years old, and I found someone pointing a gun at me and telling me to run or they'd shoot me.
I can't think of anything worse, really, than to try to live up to someone else's expectations of what you should be. You don't make art by consensus.
I dressed up as a veterinarian for a Halloween costume party. I had the lab coat. I got a couple of stuffed animals for patients and put bandages on them.
You have to pay attention to the moment and make it the best it can be for you. I've been trying to do that. It's really made a major difference for me. I'm a happier person.
Growing up in Cleveland, I learned about singing from my mother, who had once sung professionally and who admired Mahalia Jackson and Aretha Franklin.
I think of the audience the way I would think of another person: You meet someone, then you take it from there; you see what's interesting to both of you.
I'm a hopeful cynic.
When you feel like you've had a good show, you go backstage and you talk to yourself about it, and if you have a bad show you talk to yourself about it.
Love's a recurring theme through my work.
Some things remain fragments, just the lyrics and melodies or a line or two or a verse.
Maybe it's naive to say, but it almost seems like, in the past, people tried to sell you something you would actually need, like a hammer or a broom or a toothbrush. But now there's this notion that they can sell you anything. And all they have to do is convince you that you need it.
Honestly, I think, as an artist, it's everything that's in your life that informs what you do. So, obviously, growing up in Cleveland has played a big role in how I see the world.
There are good reasons for being in jail - for protesting.
I could make records at home in a vacuum, but that is not the situation. I'm just taking it one phase at a time.
If you are living a life that feels right to you, if you're willing to take creative chances or a creative path that feels like it's mostly in keeping with your sensibilities, you know, aesthetic and artistic, then that's what matters.
