A Quote by William Saroyan
The simple fact was that if the song wasn't about me, I couldn't see how it could possibly be about anybody else, including the one I knew it was supposed to be about, and good luck to him, too.
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I've never written for anybody else. For me, it was a challenge. I write for me. I don't write for anybody else. And what was good about it was that I was writing for somebody I knew. I knew what my mother thinks and how she feels. So it was finding that creative spirit to write about my mother.
When I realized I could write lyrics and let someone that I knew listen to them, but not know that the song was about them - say it was a girl. I could write this song about how I feel about this girl, I could play it to them. I just loved it, because all of the words would speak to them. I could see them slowly falling in love with me.
It made me very sad, that question. Sad and defeated. Because I knew she knew why I was thinking about that woman-I was thinking about my own tendencies toward aloneness and I thought I could end up like that woman, with a bird perhaps, or a dog-probably a dog, I know birds are supposed to make good pets but I think there's something creepy about them-but alone with a life that didn't touch or overlap with anyone else's, a sort of hermetically sealed life.
I don't try to worry about sounding like anybody because I know I have my own tone, my own sound. It's just about being honest in a song and trying to relate myself or how to basically break it down as simple as possible for someone to try to understand it. Not being too deep, not being too shallow at the same time.
But Jude,' she would say, 'you knew me. All those days and years, Jude, you knew me. My ways and my hands and how my stomach folded and how we tried to get Mickey to nurse and how about that time when the landlord said...but you said...and I cried, Jude. You knew me and had listened to the things I said in the night, and heard me in the bathroom and laughed at my raggedy girdle and I laughed too because I knew you too, Jude. So how could you leave me when you knew me?
I do belong to Jersey. There's no doubt about that in my mind. They have been so loyal and so good to me; how could I possibly belong any place else?
I do belong to Jersey. There's no doubt about that in my mind. They have been so loyal and so good to me, how could I possibly belong any place else?
...fact was she knew more about them than she knew about herself, having never had the map to discover what she was like. Could she sing? (Was it nice to hear when she did?) Was she pretty? Was she a good friend? Could she have been a loving mother? A faithful wife? Have I got a sister and does she favor me? If my mother knew me would she like me? (140)
Occasionally an unsuspecting innocent will stumble into a movie like this and send me an anguished postcard, asking how I could possibly give a favorable review to such trash. My stock response is Ebert's Law, which reads: A movie is not about what it is about. It is about how it is about it.
Bono told me how to dance in high heels and he also told me about U2's Glastonbury performance and how everything that could have possibly gone wrong went wrong, including him ripping his trousers on stage. I think he was lunging and his trousers ripped! He was telling me how he had to find a new way of performing that didn't involve moving.
If you're always thinking about someone else's work, about the tradition you're working in, how can you possibly make anything good?
I remember a prominent conservative media figure, talking to him about prominent liberal media figures that he knew, that he liked. And I questioned him. "How can you trust these people? I mean, these are..." "No, no! They're good guys. In fact, one of them likes you, says you're not a hater." And I was supposed to be thrilled to hear this!I was supposed to be mollified that some liberal media figure had just pronounced I was okay because, after he had listened to me, he had determined I wasn't a hater. I did not take that as a compliment, and I got kind of mad.
At this rate, I'd be lucky if I wrote a page a day. Then I knew what the problem was. I needed experience. How could I write about life when I'd never had a love affair or a baby or even seen anybody die? A girl I knew had just won a prize for a short story about her adventures among the pygmies in Africa. How could I compete with that sort of thing?
I like the idea that people get engaged thinking about design, about creativity. I don't see how it could possibly be bad.
"After 17" is a song I wrote when my first daughter went to college, so that's kind of where I'm at in that part of my life. If you listen to that song and knew anything about me, you'd say, "Oh yeah, he wrote that about his daughter," but I try not to write them that they are so specific that they wouldn't apply to anybody that has a child.
'After 17' is a song I wrote when my first daughter went to college, so that's kind of where I'm at in that part of my life. If you listen to that song and knew anything about me, you'd say, 'Oh yeah, he wrote that about his daughter,' but I try not to write them that they are so specific that they wouldn't apply to anybody that has a child.
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