A Quote by Samuel Ervin Beam
Every time I play with a new musician I absorb something, even if it's someone you don't like!
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The thing about acting is even if you get technically more skilled at what you do, every time you begin a film or a play you're terrified. You don't know if you're going to pull it off. Every film and every story has its own set of challenges. I've never felt like, oh yeah, that's it, nailed it! You can never sit and rest. That's why it's such an exciting job. It's beginning again every time you begin again. New story, new character, new place, new time, new director. It's like moving to a different planet and trying to figure out how to live there.
I think I turned to writing really just to wake up in the morning and be a musician and to have something to do, and feel like a musician every day even if I wasn't working.
Every time I play with someone, not just a new person, but someone I've been with all along, that's where I really learn.
I can show you that I have played with just about every jazz musician, every African musician, every blues musician. It's not like I'm cashing in on a false concept. This is what I do.
As a journalist, I never critiqued anyone. I never review books. I've never felt qualified as a musician to say whether someone is a good musician or a bad musician. What happens with Black writers and Black artists is that if you're critiqued, for example, by a Black historian who wants to get his name on the cover of "The New York Times," and he says something, like, wacky, well, he'll get his name on the cover of "The New York Times" and he might get tenure, and your career suffers.
Pep Guardiola is like going to university. I spent a year with him at City, learning something new every day. On the playing field, watching videos or at any time, when he approaches you and explains things to you. He has no problem teaching someone at 34 years old, as I was, like someone who is 18. He is a great teacher.
Performing as a musician is a lot different than performing as an actor. As an actor, you can hide behind the character in the play, and there's a director and other actors. When you're a musician, you're right there. It's sort of like being a comedian. You're giving the audience in real time something authentic from yourself. As an actor, my bullshit meter was going off like crazy at my first attempts to find my own rock star.
I play like I always used to, with no agenda. And, every once in a while, I will play something I really hadn't thought about or even intended to play. And I'll go, 'Whoa! What was that?'
Conditions are changing all the time, and to adapt one's thinking to the new conditions, one must study. Even those who have a better grasp of Marxism and are comparatively firm in their proletarian stand have to go on studying, have to absorb what is new and study new problems.
I'm hoping to learn something new every day. It sounds corny, but I really do come in here every day, listening and talking with the veteran guys and seeing what I can absorb.
I was doing a play in New York, which we had done in New Haven, Connecticut. It was an American premiere of a play called The Changing Room written by a wonderful man named David Story. It was about a rugby team in the North of England. It got just screaming rave reviews. At that time, virtually every major critic went up to the Long Wharf Theater to see a new play like that.
I recognize that as a musician there is a certain chauvinism attached to it, which is the thing of, "I spent my time learning how to play. You didn't spend time learning how to play, therefore, you are not a musician."
I love actors. I enjoy their company, and I get excited each and every time they bring a character I've written to life. Every so often a talented actor doesn't hook in correctly to a character; or someone gets lost in a labyrinth of over-complicated thoughts, and the character and play suffer. However, most of the time I find actors either end up doing exactly what was in my head, or sometimes do something even better.
Sometimes you've got to draw a line between having all the options and being a slave to the things, using them every time you play the guitar. I'm trying to keep a real inconsistency to the pedals so that it is something new every time.
Nobody else even approaches the trumpet like [Sweets Edison] does: Never too much and always plenty. He's the greatest trumpet player to play along with singers. He exactly knows how to play with you, how to answer you about what you just sang ... On top of that, he has some great sense of humor, both as a musician and as a man. Every time I see him, I'm laughing so much. Sweets is impeccable and incomparable.
Every day that you're on set is a new day to learn something. Every time you're there, there's something new that you'll notice or something that you'll miss, and you think of something new that you can do.
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