A Quote by Rodney Crowell
I admired Mary's work very much. From the time someone gave me 'The Liars' Club,' I immediately went into a world where I grew up. And I remember, when I finished the book, I actually thought, 'You know what, I need to write songs with her.'
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I asked my schoolmate Mary to write a letter to me. She was funny and full of life. She liked to run around her empty house without any clothes on, even once she was too old for that. Nothing embarrassed her. I admired that so much, because everything embarrassed me, and that hurt me. She loved to jump on her bed. She jumped on her bed for so many years that one afternoon, while I watched her jump, the seams burst. Feathers filled the small room. Our laughter kept the feathers in the air. I thought about birds. Could they fly if there wasn’t someone, somewhere, laughing?
Mickalene [Thomas] is an artist that I have admired for a long time. So much of her work inspires me - I spend time looking at her work when I'm writing. I feel like we're working toward the same themes, and I see our work in conversation, whether we know it or not.
Once, I compared poetry to mothers in my book called To Write as a Woman, because my mother is someone who captures me in her body and gave birth to me out of her desire but washed her hands of me after giving birth to me as a poet.
When I write a book I write the best that I can and so much of that for me is following the book's demands, the subject's requirements - I love books, I always have. They have always been one of the places where I have felt very happy in the world. When I was younger, I loved to read genre fiction - I loved the magic-carpet ride of story! Now I need other things - I need the beautiful particular and strange language and form which brings a writer's book to life in me and speaks to my intellect, and, dare I say it, to my soul.
Mary Ocher gives me the chills, she frightens me with her feral soul.
Her sound is of a true outsider artist, immaculately self possessed.
Was this recorded this century? Or out of a basement that's she's been imprisoned all her
life? Time to set her loose on the world. I'm so happy she exists. Set me free Mary!
I walked into my agency and I said, "You know what? I can't do this. You're telling me I need to go on a diet? My diet is already zucchini only. What do you want me to do?" And basically, they gave me two options: either stay the way I was and do commercial work, or do plus size modeling. I remember having the usual salad but I added walnuts and salmon and olive oil and I thought, "The world didn't blow up!"I felt fantastic. I wanted to keep that feeling so I made a decision that day that I didn't care. There was more money to be made being healthy.
If I ever get some free time I end up thinking about what to make next. I don't pick up a guitar and start playing the songs I already know; I immediately try to write a riff.
The second book, which was probably more from a professional standpoint - when I read Junot Díaz's Drown, I was like, Oh my god, you can write these stories and people will actually read them beyond your own little community. This guy's book is blowing up and it seems like [he's writing about] the neighborhood that I grew up in. That was a big deal. I read that in graduate school, so that's when I was really taking writing seriously, but I didn't know you could do it. I didn't know you can actually be an author. It was a weird epiphany.
Barry Harris had a club called Jazz Cultural Theater and there were sessions there on a regular basis. I remember being there and sitting in with [Charles] McPherson and Barry being there, and just smiling at me. He didn't talk to me much at the time, he just came up and gave me a smile, which meant a lot. I've since gotten to know him and been around him a little bit.
I was sad to leave Monaco, a club that gave me a lot of great moments, but in football, sometimes you need new challenges, and I thought it was time to move on.
I can still remember the time when some City fans thought it would be a good idea if I bought the club. I don't know how much money they thought I had - but I certainly don't think we'd be enjoying the success that we are under Sheikh Mansour.
My best songs were written very quickly. Just about as much time as it takes to write it down is about as long as it takes to write it...In writing songs I've learned as much from Cezanne as I have from Woody Guthrie...It's not me, it's the songs. I'm just the postman, I deliver the songs...I consider myself a poet first and a musician second. I live like a poet and I'll die like a poet.
I wasn't one of those kids who grew up wanting to write or who read a particular book and thought: 'I want to do that!' I always told stories and wrote them down, but I never thought writing was a career path, even though, clearly, someone was writing the books and newspapers and magazines.
I taught everyone a very bad lesson at my publisher because they actually gave me deadlines this time and I'm now meeting them. I used to say, "Here's my book; it's six years late." I'm so much faster now, and work differently. With all the years of writing, I think I still draft as obsessively, but I think back to writing. On your first story, you start at draft one. On your second story, you start at draft ten. On your third story, you start at draft one hundred. If you need a hundred and eight drafts, you may write eight instead of a hundred and eight.
My uncle, who gave me my first turntables when I was ten, also gave me records to mix, but I never understood house music. I thought it was boring until I was old enough to go to a club and feel it, the fact that it actually makes you just want to dance.
'Say Her Name' was a book I never wanted to write and never expected to write. I wasn't trying to do anything except write a book for Aura - a book that I thought I had to write.
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