I talk to the audience, look into their eyes. I need them and they need me.
Interpretation
The relationship between a performer and their audience is reciprocal and vital.
In this quote, Janis Joplin emphasizes the interconnectedness between herself as a performer and the audience. She recognizes that her emotional and artistic expression relies on their presence and engagement, while they, in turn, find connection and meaning in her performance. This mutual need highlights the intimacy and importance of shared experiences in the realm of live music and art.
In practice
This quote can be used when discussing the power of live performances at a music workshop.
I gotta go on doin' it the way I see it...I got no choice but to take it like I see it. I'm here to have a party while I'm on this earth...I'm gettin' it now, today. I don't even know where I'm gonna be twenty years from now, so I'm just gonna keep on rockin', cause if I start saving up bits and pieces of me...man, there ain't gonna be nothing left for Janis.
When I sing, I feel like when you're first in love. It's more than sex. It's that point two people can get to they call love, when you really touch someone for the first time, but it's gigantic, multiplied by the whole audience. I feel chills.
Like most girls I'm always really self-conscious about do I look fat, if my legs are short, if I'm weird shaped, but when I go on stage, man, it never occurs to me. I think I look beautiful.
I won't quit to become someone's old lady.
Audiences like their blues singers to be miserable.
You can feel all things at once, so why not wear all things at once?
And woman should stand beside man as the comrade of his soul, not the servant of his body.
In true marriage there must be a union of minds as well as of hearts. Emotions must not wholly determine decisions, but the mind and the heart, strengthened by fasting and prayer and serious consideration, will give one a maximum chance of marital happiness.
Miscegenation is not an idea that we would have in the Caribbean. It wouldn't come up because anybody could marry anybody, you know. I'm not saying that there aren't prejudices in the Caribbean, but the idea of the word 'miscegenation' is not something that we think of.
Nothing moves a woman so deeply as the boyhood of the man she loves.
If you will make your first concern the comfort, the well-being, and the happiness of your companion, sublimating any personal concern to that loftier goal, you will be happy, and your marriage will go on through eternity
We shall be free only together, black and white. We shall survive only together, black and white. We can be human only together, black and white.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.