A Quote by Joanna Newsom

Around eighth grade I decided I wanted to be a composer and that's what I went to college for. Just a few years back, I switched out of composition and into creative writing so I could work with words.
I decided that I wanted to be a lawyer in eighth grade.
I think by eighth grade I knew I wanted to be an actor. I'd done church plays and stuff, but my first actual acting class was in eighth grade. I was obsessed with it.
My mom was a beautician in her early days, and then my parents decided that one of them needed to go to school in order to build the future. So my mom started going to college when I was in eighth grade, and she graduated when I was a freshman in college.
In high school, I wanted to be an actress. Until I got to college and took some creative writing courses. Then I decided I wanted to become a novelist.
I used to do a lot of story writing and storytelling coming up through grade school. By the time I got to college, I decided that I wanted to perform as well, and that's where I started.
I was at Reed [College] for only a few months. My parents intended for me to stay there for all four years but I decided that college wasn't right for me. I had no idea what I wanted to do I didn't see how college was going to help me.
I never went to high school. I never really finished eighth grade. I was kicked out of seventh grade once and eighth grade twice. Mainly for not showing up and not doing it. Then I went to an alternative high school for part of what would have been ninth grade and part of what would have been 10th grade.
I've known my wife since we were 13 years old in eighth grade, and we kinda dated each other's best friends. The four of us always hung out, but I really wanted her. We dated around 17, but I was no way mature enough for her.
It's a little crazy. Last year, I was in seventh grade, and we were the babies at the school - 'cause my middle school's eighth grade and seventh grade - and now I'm eighth grade, and all these new students have come in, and they're all like, 'Oh my gosh! Darci Lynne!'
I had been playing a lot of chess and I wasn't really enjoying it, so I decided to go to college to see what else is out there for me. But after about six or seven months away from the game, I just decided that the whole college life wasn't for me and that's why I decided to come back.
I went to Duke University in the medical track. And then I decided I wanted to do something more creative, so I switched to biochemistry at Nebraska.
I'd been playing the piano since I was 6 and wanted to be a composer, but I also wanted to be an actor. I decided to just pursue both and see which won out.
The books we read change over the years as new books come out and they change over the grades. Books we are reading in fifth and sixth grade now may have been seventh and eighth grade books in the past, or the other way around.
The most important thing to remember is that the composer is a senior partner. You cannot force a subject on a composer if it doesn't inspire him. He has to take the lead, you are an enabler, and you are creating the enabling conditions under which he can write great music. Your words are secondary. Many librettists in opera collaborations in the past have forgotten this, or not known it, or refuse to accept it and tried to get out in front of the creative process and it just doesn't work that way.
In eighth grade, when I was just the school weirdo, my drama teacher put me in a play, and we came up with a few comedy bits. And that very first reaction, for an audience of supportive middle schoolers, I put my head out and pretended I got scared by the audience, and ducked back in. They all went: 'Yeah! That's great!'
Be persistent. Establishing yourself in this field could easily take years. Rarely will any composer get that one "big break." More often, success is built on hundreds - or thousands - of very small breaks. When I decided that I was definitely going to pursue a career as a film composer, I decided I was going to beat my head against that particular wall until something broke.
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