A Quote by Ian Anderson
Most of what I've written songs about are things that come out of the confusing emotional, spiritual and psychological period of time when you're going through puberty.
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Going through puberty as a young girl is so confusing. This monster invades your body, changes things and makes things grow, and no one tells you what's going on.
I think there are three kinds of songs; it's only my theory: psychological, emotional, and spiritual. When you write psychologically or intellectually, you have a tune in your mind, and you re-write it. It's an intellectual approach. The emotional is my favorite because it comes from my kishkas; it comes from my soul.
My faith, I mean, that's such a personal aspect that a lot of times, of course it's going to come out through the song. But at the same time, I'm not a religious salesman. I feel like God doesn't really need a salesman, and what these songs are are simply my interactions with this life and learning. I guess the bottom line is the songs are really honest, you know what I mean. That faith is going to come through. If the listener is looking for it, that's definitely a part of it.
Puberty is such a confusing time. You are still a child, with all that wonderful naivete and innocence, but your body is changing, and you're self-conscious and curious about its impact on others all at the same time.
The time has come for America to hear the truth about this tragic war. In international conflicts, the truth is hard to come by because most nations are deceived about themselves. Rationalizations and the incessant search for scapegoats are the psychological cataracts that blind us to our sins. But the day has passed for superficial patriotism. He who lives with untruth lives in spiritual slavery.
I'm mostly inspired by relationships and things that are going on in my everyday life. It's hard for me to write songs about things I don't experience firsthand, but most of the time it's about relationships - things that are going on in my head.
My mother tries to explain that I need support and that I'm just going through a period of adjustment. "Like puberty," she says.
I have ventured out and written about real-life experiences that I haven't gone through myself, but I've known people to go through them. In the past, I've always written about my experiences and people related to that, but there's a lot of other things that I've never written about that people have gone through.
I write about the period 1933-42, and I read books written during those years: books by foreign correspondents of the time, histories of the time written contemporaneously or just afterwards, autobiographies and biographies of people who were there, present-day histories of the period, and novels written during those times.
Songs need to have the ability to change and to grow for sure. They take on lives of their own. Some songs just don't have that capacity. They're locked within a period of time. And as soon as you take them out of that period of time, they die very quickly.
My songs are basically my diaries. Some of my best songwriting has come out of time when I've been going through a personal nightmare.
I've never written songs about relationships. I've written songs about how I feel. The songs are more about me, than another person. That's the way I like to look at it.
I had a period when I was sixteen where I started to get a big head. I was going through puberty, and I was nominated for an Academy Award. My head got inflated. My friends were the real ones who said, 'You're acting different.' But the truth is that I don't need that, because I don't get out of hand.
I started making work, and it's like, yes you are calling out all of these things that are part of your memory, your body's memory, things that have gone through your pores, what you've seen, what you've experienced, and you spill them out without thinking. I don't think so much about, "Okay, I'm going to make work, and it's going to be about this." It's just going to come out.
I write to make some sense of things that confuse me. The mechanics of my own heart are the most confusing I know about - and don't know about - and other people's are a bit confusing, too.
For anyone going through a divorce or any other painful challenge, the first and most important recommendation I can make is to find some kind of spiritual and emotional support.
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