A Quote by Dave Matthews
I go back to South Africa at least once a year, sometimes twice, and usually for a month. And probably, I'm guessing, I'll spend more time back there as I get older.
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South Africa gives me a perspective of what's real and what's not real. So I go back to South Africa to both lose myself and gain awareness of myself. Every time I go back, it doesn't take long for me to get caught into a very different thing. A very different sense of myself.
You can't keep going back to Detroit because you're big in Detroit. You can go maybe once a year and sell it out because everybody loves you and looks forward to seeing you again. You can't go back twice in the same year.
Whenever I have a little time off, I try to go back to my farm in South Africa. I'll spend time with my family and hunt antelope, kudu and springbok. During a 2010 hunting trip, I tore some ligaments in my ankle when I stepped in a hole.
As I've gotten older and I've watched people in productions, I go to the theater when I go back to London and see friends in Broadway, I think maybe there might come a time here to get back up there and prove oneself. It's just an itch; it's a nagging itch to go back there.
My maternal family are South African and when I was small and my parents separated my mother and I went back to South Africa. So for me the emergence of my own childhood consciousness was in the context of 1970s and 1980s apartheid South Africa and the movement there.
I graduated from high school at 165 pounds, so twice a year, I get back to that number - I never let it get to 172-73. Then I go back to doubling the cardio. This week, I'm on a complete liquid diet, a juice fast. It keeps me lean and hungry.
Planning is not just guessing, it is harmful guessing, because it is a waste of time. All the time you spend doing your five year plan you can use to worry about tomorrow.
I go back to Africa every year. I have a home there. You know, my grandfather lives back there in Cameroon.
I'm not sure if it's because I'm older and I'm thinking about family more, but I'm trying to set up this thing where I can play in one city for a month, and then write music for a couple months, then play in another city for a month, write music for a month. Just so it's not these two schizophrenic, Jekyll and Hyde kind of things; you don't have to be this monster. You get inspired and you can go write one song from that, and then you go back and play a few shows. If I could've done that in the 90s, I would have.
Living here in North America - I have been Americanized. When I go back home now, there are things that I have far less tolerance for in South Africa. We've come such a long way in terms of race relations and the economy as well as people's willingness to move on. There are still a lot of things that are frustrating about being in South Africa.
I was raised in Argentina until I was 11 and now I go back there a lot, at least twice a year. It's a country where I feel very comfortable and it represents an important period in my life.
When you teach, it's sometimes necessary to consciously not write for a month or two - and then pick a time in the future to sink back in. It makes you less frustrated and more in control. I do best when I give myself breaks and come back hungry.
Mostly, isolation allows me to go through a period where I really concentrate and get in a flow. Sometimes the whole process can be daunting, and when you're away from it, thinking about going back to it is especially daunting. If I go away for a week, I can be working on 10 songs at once, just jumping around to each one. I can get a month's worth of work done.
Looking at Mount Kenya in the morning is a holistic experience. I go back at least once a year.
I did this campaign that was called "Back to the Basics" where I went back to the street, went back to my block, and really felt the people. We've got to go back to that sometimes. We distance ourselves from that and we see it from afar. Some people can't relate back to that; once you're out of it, they don't want to relate back to that. It's always good to get back to the basics, though. You've got to touch the roots, you've got to touch those people. Regardless of what's going on, people always respect that.
When I go to Africa and spend more time there with people who are the least of the least, those in desperate situations, I am broken by it. But I also find people with so much more joy and freedom living with nothing than I see walking down the streets of my own community here in Tennessee.
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