A Quote by Chris Rock
There's not one reference in that thing that doesn't play. People deal with emotions in music all the time, but comedians are always talking about what they see. But we seldom talk about what we feel.
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For me music is central, so when one's talking about poetry, for the most part Plato's talking primarily about words, where I talk about notes, I talk about tone, I talk about timbre, I talk about rhythms.
I've always noticed talking about lyrics is like talking about a duality. It's like a Gemini time every time I talk about one line. Because each line, of course, means different things to different people, millions of interpretations. With me, I always see two sides. I just see things split into two.
I'm not like most comedians. I don't deal with just heckles - I'm also dealing with threats and anger. Here I am, a brown person on stage being quite blunt. I talk about white privilege; I talk about U.S. imperialistic practices; I talk about colonialism. I'm not saying things that are easy for people to laugh at.
The thing I always guard against when I'm talking to people I'm working with about a script is that there's a thing I don't like and it's called "talk story." It's when you're talking about the story; the characters are tasked with talking about the story instead of allowing the audience to experience the story.
I think, at some level, we see young people all over the country mobilizing around different issues, in which they're doing something that I haven't seen for a long time. And that is, they're linking issues together. You can't talk about police violence without talking about the militarization of society in general. You can't talk about the assault on public education unless you talk about the way in which capitalism defunds all public goods. You can't talk about the prison system without talking about widespread racism. You can't do that. They're making those connections.
I talk with countries, whether it's the Arab states or in the Middle East, and they talk about how they're glad to see us fighting against Iran. I talk with different countries in reference to Syria, and we talk about how we can get the Iranian influence out. We're talking about North Korea and what we need to do and the pressure we need to put on China. They're happy that we're finally beating up on Russia for what they've done in the Ukraine.
I'm single and loving it. It is always weird talking about that stuff. When someone is talking about who they are going out with, I am always like, who cares? Talk about your music or something.
Talking about performance is such a strange thing because it's so immaterial. We are talking about soft matter. We are talking about something that is invisible. You can't see it. You can't touch it. You just can feel it.
Interesting thing that is happening in American society is that people are starting to talk about money. I don't know how you feel about this, but for a long time, nobody was talking about money. It was a secret. And it's kind of very interesting because we do lots of stuff to portray to people about how much money we have, the clothes we wear and the cars we have and the house - they all kind of depict to other people, signal how much money we make, but we don't talk about it specifically.
I think there's just been this "thing" that's developed, this way that we have of talking about our music that alienates people. And I fall into that too! I learned that in graduate school. You just talk about your music in a specific way, and that separates people from you. But some composers like that. Schoenberg liked that. He wanted to feel that he was making music for an elite few. That's fine for him, but I want to set myself free from that sort of attitude.
Talking about music and talking about drums brings me back to my beginning and the simplicity, and the excitement about trying to play something and see if it works for your band.
That's what I was trying to say when we were talking about sound. I think that every person, whether they play music or don't play music, has a sound - their own sound, that thing that you're talking about.
The personal boundaries, I think for comedians they're a little bit different anyway, but I think people - feel free to do stuff - It's interesting with comedians because when we walk on stage, oftentimes we're talking about ourselves for an hour and we're talking about very intimate details, so after hearing us for an hour, a lot of people feel very comfortable with us because they feel like they know us and they're our friends because we just told them our innermost secrets and details of our lives for an hour. What they forget is we know absolutely nothing about the audience.
The basic thing is to be humble, and pretend you're a bartender in the tavern of life. Don't get too comfortable and don't really listen to anybody else. Don't stand around with a bunch of writers and talk about writing. You know when you see plumbers at a plumbers convention, usually they're not talking about plumbing: they're talking about whatever it is that two men happen to talk about. They're talking about sports, their wives and children. I just tell my students, don't talk about writing too much, just go out and do it. Find out whatever you need to get to the mainland.
I always wanted to have a young female artist that would tell me the truth about life and not only talk about the good things or the things that were exciting or interesting but also talk about the things that people in general are skeptical to talk about- the bad things that do happen. A good 50% of our lives is things that are happening that we're not necessarily super thrilled about and I feel like that's missing from pop music a lot of the time so my main goal is to be truthful about everything and not just specific things.
I think any information about any type of art form, it's always the right time. But since the last one, I could see there were many things about the culture of DJing that we don't really talk about. We don't really look at how the music is made, how it's conceptualized, how it's put together. We talk about the equipment and the software, but we don't talk about the reasons why we put the music together in the first place.
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