A Quote by Wanda Sykes
I'm constantly preparing. Material hits me; I'm always writing. I go back and listen to my shows and just prepare and put my set together. But the day of, I like to have some downtime. A nice lunch is important for me.
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When you wrote a song way back in the day, you were writing material to play live. And you would buy the CD at the shows if you like the show. You may not listen to the CD, you might just throw it in the back of your car and let it warp in the sun. The main thing was you saw the song at the show.
Sometimes when I'm writing I'll play Cole Porter, just because the rhythms and the lyrics are so perfect that it's like having a smart partner in the room. I have a huge collection of music that I listen to when I'm writing, and I also prepare a lot of music before I start directing. I put it all onto an iPod that I have with me on the set. It's helpful to the actors, because for an emotional scene, I'll play it and say, this is how it feels, to keep us in the zone.
If there is something that strikes me as interesting or beautiful or something I could learn from, and I don't write it down, then I could be at lunch with you, and it's like there's a pile of laundry in my brain that I haven't put away, and I struggle to really listen, so that's always been important to me.
I think at some level, it's just alchemy that we, as writers, can't explain when we write the characters. I don't set out to create the characters - they're not, to me, collections of quirks that I can put together. I discover the characters, instead. I usually go through a standard set of interview questions with the character in the beginning and ask the vital stuff: What's important to you? What do you love? Hate? Fear? .. and then I know where to start. But the characters just grow on their own, at a certain point. And start surprising me.
I read the reviews sometimes, but I don't let it really affect the next album because, for me, when I approach an album, it's usually coming to me pretty naturally. It's not like I set out, like, "Okay, I'm going to write an album this month." It's more like I'm just always writing songs and eventually I start to realize that a group of songs sort of fits together, and I go from there in putting together the album and themes and artwork and things like that.
I've argued this with a lot of people in my life. When people say God blessed me with a beautiful jump shot, it really pisses me off. I tell those people, 'Don't undermine the work I've put in every day.' Not some days. Every day. Ask anyone who has been on a team with me who shoots the most. Go back to Seattle and Milwaukee and ask them. The answer is me -- not because it's a competition, but because that's how I prepare.
I'm probably one of the worst actors as far as preparation goes, because I actually don't prepare. I find it easier to read the script and whatever hits me in my stomach, like deep down, I just go with it. And the director kind of molds me whether to go right or left with it.
My writing is of a very different kind from anything I've heard about. All this mythological material is out there, a big gathering of stuff, and I have been reading it for some forty- or fifty-odd years. There are various ways of handling that. The most common is to put the material together and publish a scholarly book about it. But when I'm writing, I try to get a sense of an experiential relationship to the material. In fact, I can't write unless that happens ... I don't write unless the stuff is really working on me, and my selection of material depends on what works.
I have written 20 books, and each one is like having a baby. Writing is not easy; some people want to write books but just can't put a story together. I can put together a story that interests both me and my readers.
For the live shows, I'm just getting my song together. I go back to my hotel room and I just listen to my song over and over again, figure out how to make it different and put my little Pia spin on it.
I don't at least for me I don't ever really look for trends. I'm looking for just what captures my attention at that time and rarely do I ever look back and try and put together trends or say this kind of trend is important. For me it's about the individual expression and if you go back and look through the archives you might find certain things become trends, but it's just not something that particularly interests me.
As an artist, what you do is you put out material constantly. Whether it's films, or TV shows, music... and you know, you hope people respond to it. You always have to know, as well, that not everybody's gonna like it. And that's okay. It's not for everyone. It's just for the crusty nugs.
I didn't know how to grab your best material and put it together into a comedy set. I would just choose subjects and do it onstage. That's what I learned. I didn't know how to put a set together.
It would be so nice to have the luxury just to laze. So nice not to have to always get up and get dressed for some occasion. Always having to move from here to there, where everything is scheduled and even having lunch with my kids on their Easter break has to be slotted in. Maybe one day...
I just practice. I do six hours of practice everyday. I set to teach myself the trumpet they all said I would never play. I put the organ in my music, like if you listen to my work Day By Day, which got me my second Grammy nomination.
I think what's cool about Slayer is no matter how old their albums are, it's the one band to me that their sound is immortal. It never sounds corny to me. You can go back and listen to some Pantera and Metallica albums, and you're like, 'OK, great music.' But Slayer, you go back, and they always sound fresh and hard as hell.
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