A Quote by David Longstreth
The first musical stuff I worked on was after the tour for 'Swing Lo Magellan' had ended and I didn't really know what else to do. I didn't know what music I would write. I just did work for other people - arranging, producing, writing - and all of that seemed to be in L.A.
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When the Swing Lo Magellan touring wound up, it felt like the end of something for me, and I needed a break from touring. But really, the co-writing and producing I did after this gave me a different perspective on this whole thing. To me, that was like being a different spoke on the wheel.
As far as working with Kanye and Solange, that was amazing. After 'Swing Lo Magellan', I needed a change. Getting to work in that capacity, writing for other people and working for other people as a writer and as a person who's not representing it as the front person or whatever - it's such a different perspective you can get.
I just play music by listening and responding, so I don't know anything about writing songs or arranging and all of this stuff. You know, it's in my head, but I don't know how to get it out.
Trying to make your own sound is hard. When I was producing for other artists, I could just produce and write songs as a normal songwriter, and almost make them generic. The artists themselves, whoever is singing that song, can put their own twist on it. When it came to my own material, I had to really dig deep, because I was just writing generic stuff. It sounded like everybody else, like Justin Timberlake, like Usher. I never wanted to sound like someone, that's when you know it's not going to work.
Well, a lot of people don't know this about me, but I'm actually shy around people I don't know. I would just say with my first concert, my first tour, I didn't really talk onstage. I was like, "Thank you, I love you guys," or whatever. But now I've just kind of learned to work a crowd.
Well, a lot of people don't know this about me, but I'm actually shy around people I don't know. I would just say with my first concert, my first tour, I didn't really talk onstage. I was like, 'Thank you, I love you guys,' or whatever. But now I've just kind of learned to work a crowd.
I myself, as I'm writing, don't know who did it. The readers and I are on the same ground. When I start to write a story, I don't know the conclusion at all and I don't know what's going to happen next. If there is a murder case as the first thing, I don't know who the killer is. I write the book because I would like to find out. If I know who the killer is, there's no purpose to writing the story.
Swing your swing. Not some idea of a swing. Not a swing you saw on TV. Not that swing you wish you had. No, swing your swing. Capable of greatness. Prized only by you. Perfect in it's imperfection. Swing your swing. I know, I did.
I've been writing music since I was about eight. I would write sporadically. I wrote a lot of music in high school. I guess the oldest song on the record ("I Thought I Saw Your Face") is about eight years old. It's the old "I had my whole life to write my first album and six months to write the second one." I did, to some degree, but actually, a lot of the songs that ended up on the record, I wrote really recently. So it varies.
I worked mostly in television drama for my first few years. I just kept guesting on NYPD Blues and CSI-like stuff, so when I started getting work in comedy, a lot of people in the business would say, 'Oh - I didn't know you did comedy.'
I was writing - at least beginning to write Boston Boy and there were a lot of holes in my so-called research. I didn't know the towns my mother and father came from in Russia. I didn't know the name of the clothing store I went to work for when I was 11 years old. I didn't know a lot of things. So I called for my FBI files, not expecting to have that stuff there, but I wanted to know what they had on me.But they did have the towns my mother and father lived in in Russia. They had the grocery store I worked in when I was 11 years old.
About a year after (my stories began being published), magazine editor George Scithers, suggested to me that since I was so new at being published, I must be very close to what I had to learn to move from fooling around with writing to actually producing professional stories. There are a lot of aspiring writers out there who would like to know just that. Write that book.SFWW-I is that book. It's the book I was looking for when I first started writing fiction.
When I first came to Columbia University, I was dirt poor. I did not choose to come here - I just ended up here because I had nowhere else to go, having just escaped from China after Tiananmen. I was in a new country where I didn't understand the language, didn't know anybody, and didn't have a penny to my name. So I was desperate and afraid.
It's much easier to write a song for a musical than just writing a song because, writing for a musical, you know what the story is about, so you know what the songs have got to say.
My first love is writing and producing. So I sometimes put my own stuff off to work on other people's projects.
The full thing is God-given. I don't know how I got my swing or what I did. I know I worked every single day. I know I did as much as I could with my dad. But I never really looked at anything mechanical. There was nothing really like, 'Oh, put your hands here.' It was, 'Where are you comfortable? You're comfortable here; hit from there.'
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