A Quote by Erskine Caldwell
I was not a writer to begin with; I was a listener.
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You know, as a writer, I'm more of a listener than a writer, cuz if I hear something I will write it down.
When I speak of the gifted listener, I am thinking of the nonmusician primarily, of the listener who intends to retain his amateur status. It is the thought of just such a listener that excites the composer in me.
I have this ideal listener, as John Cage did. This listener doesn't bring expectations that my music will fit into some part of music history, or that it will do any particular thing. This listener is just open to listening.
Nobody becomes a writer overnight. Well, I'm sure somebody did, but that person's head probably went all asplodey from paroxysms of joy, fear, paranoia, guilt and uncertainty. Celebrities can be born overnight. Writer's can't. Writers are made - forged, really, in a kiln of their own madness and insecurities - over the course of many, many moons. The writer you are when you begin is not the same writer you become.
Since true listening involves a setting aside of the self, it also temporarily involves a total acceptance of the others. Sensing this acceptance, the speaker will feel less and less vulnerable, and more and more inclined to open up the inner recesses of his or her mind to the listener. As this happens, speaker and listener begin to appreciate each other more and more, and the dance of love is begun again.
You're not going to be a writer someday. You're a writer today. Discipline yourself to write and take time to enjoy writing. Do it a lot. Have fun with it. Begin now.
I'm very thankful, hearing impairment or not, that I've brought listening into my life. I will never say that I'm a good listener, however. Thinking that I was a good listener was one thing that kept me from being a good listener. It's a very dangerous thought. I just want to be better.
Music has been there for me. Whether good or bad, it's the way that I process experience. As a listener and as a writer.
As I'm writing it, I'm kind of curious to see what's going to happen. It almost feels like I'm the writer and I'm the listener, too.
If we want to be heard we must speak in a language the listener can understand and on a level at which the listener is capable of operating.
Begin your story with a sentence that will immediately grab hold of your listener's ears like a surly nun in a Catholic school.
The challenge for a good musician is to bring out compositions that seem fresh to the listener, even if the listener has heard the song or the composition before.
Radio affects most intimately, person-to-person, offering a world of unspoken communication between writer-speaker and the listener.
Well, when I was a young writer the people we read were Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Sartre, Camus, Celine, Malraux. And to begin with, I was a bit of a copycat writer and very derivative and tried to write a novel using their voices, really.... I keep it out of print.
Surely the hold of great music on the listener is precisely this: that the listener is made whole; and at the same time part of an image of infinite grace and grandeur which is creation.
To me, soul music is anything that is made from the heart, and therefore moves the listener; it's not overly self-aware, and leaves room for the listener to make their own conclusions.
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