A Quote by Suzan-Lori Parks
I love my lecture tours. I get up onstage. I have my stack of books and a glass of water and a microphone. No podium, no distance between me and the audience, and I just talk to people and get all excited and tell a lot of jokes, and sing some songs, and read from my work and remind people how powerful they are and how beautiful they are.
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I get hundreds of emails daily and a lot of feedback from people that are reading or have read my books. When I'm writing, or in my daily life, I just think of the work. I love to tell a story, but I might work with a story to make it the best I can without thinking of how many people will read it or if it will influence anybody.
I love making people sing. I love group singing, sacred harp singing, choral singing, recordings of people singing sea shanties, work songs, prison songs - how people just sang to get through things.
There are jokes I know I want to tell, and there's sort of a rough order, but usually I try to change it up every show, to improvise and talk with the audience. I think when you tell jokes, if you're not careful, you can end up telling the whole list of jokes and then that's it. And that can get a little boring.
This is how it works. I love the people in my life, and I do for my friends whatever they need me to do for them, again and again, as many times as is necessary. For example, in your case you always forgot who you are and how much you're loved. So what I do for you as your friend is remind you who you are and tell you how much I love you. And this isn't any kind of burden for me, because I love who you are very much. Every time I remind you, I get to remember with you, which is my pleasure.
With me being in so many pain from when you have a betrayal from your best friend - who was my husband - and the girl got pregnant, I couldn't even get out of bed. The only thing that saved me was my stand-up. I would get on stage and just talk about stuff, and I made people laugh. A lot of women e-mail me and say, 'How do you smile? How do you laugh at something like this?' That's how I do it. I laugh because that's how I get through pain.
Some shows feel very reverent - when you're in a seated theater, no one really sings. I love it when people sing! I wish people would sing all the time. Because one of my favorite things when I get to do as a musician is step away from the microphone and listen to everyone sing together.
Every morning I wake up and I tell myself this: It's just one day, one twenty-four-hour period to get yourself through. I don't know when exactly I started giving myself this daily pep talk--or why. It sounds like a twelve-step mantra and I'm not in Anything Anonymous, though to read some of the crap they write about me, you'd think I should be. I have the kind of life a lot of people would probably sell a kidney to just experience a bit of. But still, I find the need to remind myself of the temporariness of a day, to reassure myself that I got through yesterday, I'll get through today.
People don't understand how hard it is to get recognized, how hard it is to get people to read your books. How hard it is to get people to even to understand what they're reading when they're talking to you about their books.
I get to work with people I love who challenge and inspire me. And I get to sing songs that do that same thing!
People call me a theater actor, but I'm just an actor. But I tell my friends all the time - especially a lot that do theater and haven't done a lot of TV/film - that you have so much more control over your work onstage. When you go onstage, you can really see the difference between people who can really do it, and people who are just kind of pretending to do it. There is no editor, there's nothing that's going to stop the actor from showing what they can do unless it's not a well-written role.
Just me onstage with a mike having an intimate relationship with the audience. I don't get nervous for that. I just get excited.
You're always learning so much from people and how they work and what their processes are. Some people like to listen to music before they get into it, and some people can talk all the way up to, "Action!" Everybody is different.
I always tell people that I have never ever gone dancing in my life. But that's the point. It's the point of dreaming of doing it, imagining doing it. My music is like a fantasy version of it, not a practical version of it. With the way a club DJ would make a track - they are in the club, they know how to get people excited. I don't know how to get people excited. I'm just imagining euphoria; I'm not necessarily feeling it.
I definitely am a performer, and there are different styles of stand-up; I mean, some people are writers and they get onstage to get jokes out, and that's definitely not what I do. I like to just go up and, if I'm telling a story about someone, I'll play his or her part.
Fahrenheit 451 is one of those books that is about how amazing books are and how amazing the people who write books are. Writers love writing books like this, and for some reason, we let them get away with it.
I was thinking how strange it is that water is one of the best, simplest things on this planet, and still with a simple glass of water you can neutralize so many of the greatest technological advances that we provide. Like with my blackberry, I can get in touch with so many people, but if I dip it in a small glass of water I'm completely disconnected.
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