A Quote by Timothy West
The Long and the Short and the Tall made a great impression on me because it was a very ugly tale about the reality of soldiering at a time when we were being gung-ho about the whole thing of war.
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I was pretty gung-ho about music and pursuing that and figuring that whole thing out, so I was wide-eyed and ready to go when I moved to Nashville. I never looked back.
The road and the tale have both been long, would you not say so? The trip has been long and the cost has been high... but no great thing was ever attained easily. A long tale, like a tall Tower, must be built a stone at a time.
While we were working, we were writing about a tall girl and a short girl, which we thought was funny, because Alison's [McGhee] tall and I'm short.
I was gung-ho, no question about that.
It's depicted in comics as, like, this gung-ho, 'Let's die in battle, in glory' idea, because that's just the genre we're in. But that's not what war really is.
Don't get me started on Americans and war. One of the things I learnt over in Italy is how they mythologised the war so that it's all good old gung-ho guys from Omaha and ignored everyone else's role.
I have always lived in Amsterdam. During the war, we inhabited the Rivieren neighborhood where many Jews lived at the time. Our downstairs neighbors were Jews, and there were also Jews a few houses from us. We saw how they were rounded up and taken away. That made a very great impression on me.
I've certainly experienced racism, but it has not made a great impact on me. I have always thought, as I got older and older, I was more in charge of who I was. What someone thought about me or said about me made less of an impression on me at very vulnerable times.
When I worked with General Electric, again this was soon after the Second World War, you know, I was keeping up with new developments and they showed me a milling machine and this thing worked by punch cards - that's where computers were at that time, and everybody was sort of sheepish about how well this thing worked because in those days machinists were treated as though they were great musicians because they were virtuosos on these machines.
One of the things I like best about Netflix is that they make projects like 'Beasts of No Nation.' It's a film about a reality in an African country where kids were being used to be soldiers in a war. And it made so much sense to me as a citizen of the world.
I've always been scared of somebody telling me what to do with my music. What if a great acting opportunity came up, and they were like, "No. You have to go tour and open up for this band," that I'm just not that crazy about? I made a decision a long time ago that I'm doing it because I love it, because it's fun. If I break even, that's a good thing.
My whole childhood, that made my skin curl. I was looking for something authentic. I think that drove me into the arts, I really do. That really did it. The only other thing that made me survive, as a human being, was getting into the arts. I was surrounded by people that were very bright and they invited you in. They were gracious. So, it gave me a great education.
Modernism really started with people getting infatuated with the idea of "it's the twentieth century, is this suitable for the twentieth century." This happened before the First World War and it wasn't just the soldiers. You can see it happening if you read the Bloomsbury biographies. It was a reaction to a great extent against Victorianism. There was so much that was repressive and stuffy. Victorian buildings were associated with it, and they were regarded as very ugly. Even when they weren't ugly, people made them ugly. They were painted hideously.
I'm in trouble if they can't, because everyone's taller than me, and if that's true, that means I can't have any friends! Alison [McGhee] and I look very much like, I was going to say Bink and Gollie, but I meant Mutt and Jeff. We look ridiculous when we walk down the street together, because she's so tall and I'm so short. But yes, tall people and short people can, and should be, friends. I, personally, like being short. I think it makes things easier.
There was that 'anything is achievable' attitude in the Eighties. Everything was very positive and gung-ho. Well, 'hedonistic' is the word they use a lot. We were all confident bordering on arrogant.
I had a fear of being too tall because my dad is very tall, and both my sisters are very tall. And they're drop-dead gorgeous, but I just didn't know if I, as Storm, wanted to be 6 feet tall, 'cause I feel like that's pretty tall.
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