A Quote by Kevin Eubanks
I thought people cared about music in a deep way, so I was writing to that spirit in people and in myself. It was me, thinking I knew what was up. Youth, who else can change the world?
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I know from the elders that it's not so easy to sustain a life in music, a presence in the music world, for decades on end. And that's what we're here for: we're thinking about the long game. If that is dependent on other people's desire for me, then it becomes extremely vulnerable to change. Rather than subject myself to that vulnerability, I'd rather embrace change and allow myself to transform, and maybe that means that what I do next week, the people who liked me last week won't like anymore, but maybe that will also lead people to like something else.
I gave up that idea of trying to make music that I thought other people would want. I just made music for myself and music for people that I knew.
Once I tried to find myself as a musician and a composer, I went back and saw that there was something special about Puerto Rican music. I knew that before, but had never sat down and thought about it. The more I learned about it, the more it found its way into the music I was writing.
I remember thinking Democrats and liberals were the good guys. They cared about the little guy. They cared about poor people. They cared about minorities.
People showed me this way of dealing with music, writing songs, thinking about music and shows and our community and the fact that it doesn't have to be about being popular or fashion or making money.
We never really cared about all the things that other people cared about, you know? Like, people recognizing me on the street never interested me. I've always been kind of suspicious of the world, anyway, so it's pretty easy for me to live in my own little world.
Well, I believe that "thinking" is just as real a phenomenon in the world as anything else, and just as worthy of exploration. Maybe even more? So writing about "thought" to me is like writing about a tree or anything else real.
When people speak to me of the torment of writing, I can think only of what it was like before I wrote: once writing meant writing and not thinking about writing, I knew nothing of any torment.
People who thought of my journey as a physical ordeal or an act of courage... missed the point. Courage and physical endurance were no more than useful items of equipment for me, like facility with languages or immunity to hepatitis. The goal was comprehension, and the only way to comprehend the world was by making myself vulnerable to it so that it could change me. The challenge was to lay myself open to everybody and everything that came my way. The prize was to change and grow big enough to feel one with the whole world.
I've never written for anybody else. For me, it was a challenge. I write for me. I don't write for anybody else. And what was good about it was that I was writing for somebody I knew. I knew what my mother thinks and how she feels. So it was finding that creative spirit to write about my mother.
Lena Dunham or Miranda July, those people are sort of thinking about their work in a slightly different way than I do, where their whole body is a seed of what they're creating. I can't imagine watching Miranda's movies with anybody else playing her role, she's so integral. But for me, it feels more like every story is really individual. If I thought of something else, or thought it should be my body representing it, I'd fold my body into it. But most of the time I'm writing to get something out of my body.
...Stop blaming me, thinking I'm the problem. If you think I'm the problem, then you have to change me. If you realize that you're the problem, then you can change yourself, learn something and grow wiser. Most people want everyone else in the world to change themselves. Let me tell you, it's easier to change yourself than everyone else.
I knew there was going to be pressure on me with the captaincy. I knew people would be writing about my performances more than anyone else's, but that's not a problem because I have my dad telling me about my performance every single game, and he is my biggest critic.
You change the beat up, you might change the way people dance to the music. If you change the way they move, maybe they'll think about it differently.
I think, more than anything else, my dog's death has made me grow up. I find myself thinking about the world in a more serious way.
It feels amazing and beautiful that music can have such an importance on the way that people form social groups. Music can change people. People can change the world.
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