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.
Interpretation
Singing evokes an immense emotional connection, akin to the feelings of being in love.
Janis Joplin expresses how the act of singing lifts her spirit and creates a profound emotional experience. She compares this exhilaration to the initial stages of falling in love, emphasizing the deep connection and unique intimacy that arises from performing for an audience, which amplifies her feelings and generates a sense of shared experience.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech at a music event to highlight the emotional power of performance.
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.
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?
Wait a minute, maybe I can do anything.
The tenderness between two people can turn the air tender, the room tender, time itself tender. As I step out of bed and slip on an oversize shirt, everything around me feels like it's the temperature of happiness.
Smiles from reason flow, To brute deny'd, and are of love the food.
Speak tenderly; let there be kindness in your face, in your eyes, in your smile, in the warmth of your greeting. Always have a cheerful smile. Don't only give your care, but give your heart as well.
I pray that you will understand the words of Jesus, “Love one another as I have loved you.” Ask yourself “How has he loved me? Do I really love others in the same way?” Unless this love is among us, we can kill ourselves with work and it will only be work, not love. Work without love is slavery.
The highest form of love is the love that allows for intimacy without the annihilation of difference.
If you are not long, I will wait for you all my life.
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