A Quote by John Coltrane

I would like to bring to people something like happiness. I would like to discover a method so that if I want it to rain, it will start right away to rain. If one of my friends is ill, I'd like to play a certain song and he will be cured; when he'd be broke, I'd bring out a different song and immediately he'd receive all the money he needed.
You would like to read, but somehow the rain gets into the book, too; not literally, and yet it really does, the letters are meaningless, and all you hear is the rain. You would like to play the piano, but the rain comes to sit alongside and play an accompaniment. And then the dry weather returns, which is to say there is steam and bright light. People age quickly.
Whenever I think I know something is a classic, or an amazing song, I realise it's still so subjective, because you and your friends could be talking about something, say, '(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction' - an amazing classic song - or someone would be like, "'Hey Jude' is an amazing song!", and I'd be like, "I don't really like it."
People always say that music is a universal language. It was very, very true. We could show up anywhere with any people speaking different languages and we could just be like, "You want to play that song? Yeah, okay." We would usually want to play Latin American songs, and they would usually want to play Santana or Jimi Hendrix and stuff like that. So we would trade off. So yeah, we were able to make a lot of friends that way and meet a lot of local musicians. It was a great experience.
With the song 'This Christmas' I wanted to do something that was kind of different. I mean, Donny Hathaway is an amazing artist. So I wanted to bring my flavor to the song so when people over the age of 45 or 50 hear it they'll be like 'OK, he did his thing with that record.' It's like I can appeal to everybody and not just a younger demographic.
There are moments when I think it will never end, that it will last indefinitely. It's like the rain. Here the rain, like everything else, suggests permanence and eternity. I say to myself: it's raining today and it's going to rain tomorrow and the next day, the next week and the next century.
I can remember when I was just, like, about four years old in Compton, and my mother would have me stack 45s, stack about ten of them, and when one would finish, the next record would drop. It was like I was DJ'ing for the house, picking out certain songs and so this song would go after that song.
I've been on a real Credence Clearwater kick. I've been collecting their albums on CD -- right now I really like 'I Put a Spell on You.' I don't know who actually wrote it; it might be a traditional, or like, an old blues song, I haven't looked in the liner notes, but it's the first song on their first album. I love all the hits; I mean @#$%&, I like every one of them. I think my favorite song by John Fogerty is 'Have You Ever Seen the Rain?' They're my favorite American band of all time, totally.
I'll listen to certain things that I made back then, and I'm like, 'I wish I could have done this, I would've done that'. When you start out making music, you just want to make something that people will like.
Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby. The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk. The rain makes running pools in the gutter. The rain plays a little sellp-song on our roof at night- And I love the rain.
['Fire and Rain'] is sort of almost uncomfortably close. Almost confessional. The reason I could write a song like that at that point, and probably couldn't now, is that I didn't have any sense that anyone would hear it. I started writing the song while I was in London...and I was totally unknown.... So I assumed that they would never be heard. I could just write or say anything I wanted. Now I'm very aware, and I have to deal with my stage fright and my anxiety about people examining or judging it. The idea that people will pass judgment on it is not a useful thought.
The thing that will never go away is that connection you make with a band or a song where you're moved by the fact that it's real people making music. You make that human connection with a song like 'Let It Be' or 'Long and Winding Road' or a song like 'Bohemian Rhapsody' or 'Roxanne,' any of those songs. They sound like people making music.
When I'm awake all night, sometimes I see the people and the city waking up around me. I feel a little bit moody at them for stepping into my night-time. What I want is that feeling when you're in the rain, or a storm. It's a shiver at the edge of your mind, an atmosphere of hearing a sad, distant sound, but it seems closer - like it's just for you. Like hearing rain or a whale-song, a cry in the dark, the far cry.
On past records I usually did start with a story or an idea for a song and then write around it, but on Achilles' Heel I would just start writing and try to let the song and my sub-conscience determine the direction. which is a goofy way of saying I tried not to decide before hand what the song and or the characters would do and be like.
People wonder why there seems to be no meaning in life. Meaning does not exist a priori. There is no meaning existing in life; one has to create it. Only if you create it will you discover it. It has to be invented first. It is not lying there like a rock, it has to be created like a song. It is not a thing, it is significance that you bring through your consciousness.
For so much of my life, I lived feeling as if, if I spoke, if I said something, I would lose everything. I would be pushed out. No one will want me. No one will love me. No one would want to be friends with me. It took me decades to get to a space of saying, 'This is my truth. This is who I am, and I don't care if you like me or you don't like me.'
Let my teaching fall like rain and my words descend like dew, like showers on new grass, like abundant rain on tender plants.
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