A Quote by Amanda Palmer
I draw the line at letting people into my songwriting cave. To me, that's where the alchemy happens and where the mystery is.
Related Quotes
Songwriting is a mystery. And it's a mystery to me that it's a mystery. But that sounds stupid.
I believe in civil liberties for homosexuals. I guess I'd have to say I'd draw the line at letting them teach in the schools.
Most people draw from the mind, not the eye. They draw the idea of a table or a face, not what's in front of them. We don't actually see the line of the jaw as a line and we don't see an eye as a perfectly outlined almond shape.
The old alchemy, or what was just called alchemy, has a history. Most people, if they've been trained in sciences, think of alchemy as the precursor to chemistry. Back in time, people were called alchemists and they worked for kings and rich people, smelting metal and trying to change base metal into gold, because the king wanted to be richer.
I get to draw what I like to draw, basically people hangin' around, and write very humanistic kinds of situations and characters. But I do also like to draw adventure stories - more in terms of drawing them than writing them - and letting my imagination go wild.
Draw a line; draw a line that pleases you. And remember that it is not the artist's role to copy the outlines of things but to create a world of his own lines on paper." (pp.28-29)
Songwriting is one thing that I have blessed to myself. It's a very personal thing for me, the business is very shared and you're constantly around people. So it just kinda happens when it happens and I write when I want to write and that's the way it's going to be or else I wouldn't even be doing this.
Everything in life, is a question of drawing a life, John, and you have to decide for yourself where to draw it. You cant draw it for others. You can try, of course, but it doesn't work. People obeying rules laid down my somebody else is not the same thing as respecting life. And if you want to respect life, you have to draw a line.
With me more than anybody it seems silly having a stage name, and there wasn't any particular difference between me and John Wesley Harding. There wasn't any need to draw that line. I just happened to draw it.
If you consider that a single straight line can be drawn between any two points, one day I'm going to draw a line from him to me or me to him.
People always ask me, "Oh, do you ever want to start your own thing?" And I don't, actually. I think what I enjoy most is the sort of co-production of things, where you bring something and somebody else brings something and a kind of alchemy happens.
I sort of have various sort of theories when people ask me about songwriting because it is a mystery. You don't really know. Sometimes you can do it and sometimes you can't. It's really peculiar.
Much of songwriting is simply a mystery.
There's an element to songwriting that I can't explain, that comes from somewhere else. I can't explain that dividing line between nothing and something that happens within a song, where you have absolutely nothing, and then suddenly you have something. It's like the origin of the universe.
One of the great elements of the supernatural is having that mystery and letting people's imaginations run wild with it.
Of course, I'm being rude. I'm spoiling the ending, not only of the entire book, but of this particular piece of it. I have given you two events in advance, because I don't have much interest in building mystery. Mystery bores me. It chores me. I know what happens and so do you. It's the machinations that wheel us there that aggravate, perplex, interest, and astound me. There are many things to think of. There is much story.
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