Sometimes I sound like gravel, and sometimes I sound like coffee and cream.
Nina SimoneRead
How do you explain what it feels like to get on the stage and make poetry that you know sinks into the hearts and souls of people who are unable to express it
Interpretation
The quote reflects the profound emotional experience of sharing poetry with an audience.
Nina Simone emphasizes the deep connection between the artist and the audience, highlighting the power of poetry to resonate with listeners on a profound emotional level. She articulates the challenge of conveying the unique feeling of performing art that touches the hearts and souls of individuals, many of whom may struggle to articulate their own feelings.
In practice
In a speech during a poetry reading event.
Sometimes I sound like gravel, and sometimes I sound like coffee and cream.
Jazz is a white term to define black people. My music is black classical music.
I only knew classical music, which to me was the only true music. The only way I could survive at the bar was to mix the classical music with popular songs, and that meant I had to sing. What happened was that I discovered I had a voice plus the talent to mix classical music together with more popular songs, which at the time I detested.
Everything that happened to me as a child involved music. It was part of everyday life, as automatic as breathing.
I didn't get interested in music. It was a gift from God.
This may be a dream, but I'll say it anyway: I was supposed to be married last year, and I bought a gown. When I meet Nelson Mandela, I shall put on this gown and have the train of it removed and put aside, and kiss the ground that he walks on and then kiss his feet.
Creative life should be more than preaching to the converted, more than going for a core audience of 100,000 people. It should be taking risks, challenging the readership and having enough faith in one's own talent and craft to take readers on that ride.
And that's what art is, a form in which people can reflect on who we are as human beings and come to some understanding of this journey we are on.
We rode on the winds of the rising storm, We ran to the sounds of the thunder. We danced among the lightning bolts, and tore the world asunder.
You come in off the street, through the doors of the theater. You sit down. The lights go down and the curtain goes up. And you're in another world
I'm trying to discover - invent, I suppose - an architecture, and forms of urban planning, that do something of the same thing in a contemporary way. I started out trying to create buildings that would sparkle like isolated jewels; now I want them to connect, to form a new kind of landscape, to flow together with contemporary cities and the lives of their peoples.
The enemies of acting are mood and attitude and other general homogenized disruptive entities. Whereas acting is about action - doing - and unless you can figure out a way to craft in an imaginative reality to which you don't submit, you're going to be out of control. You'll flip out. The job is to be surprised.
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