I would tell my younger self not to always fight the gatekeepers. It's just important to look for a path around them. Always look over their shoulders to see what's happening on the other side and how you're going to get there. You don't have to jump in and fight everybody, because that doesn't always work.
-- Cyndi Lauper, "The Last Word," Rolling Stone
He was preternaturally curious. He seemed always to be pushing at the edges of any situation to find the underbelly of wisdom and poetry. He looked for the truth of a person, a situation, a moment, a question, an action. More often than not, he found it, and offered it back to the rest of us, transformed into sublime jewels of rhymes and melodies and ideas that pushed far past convention.
-- Rosanne Cash, Tribute to Kris Kristofferson
Everybody has the Blues. Everybody longs for meaning. Everybody needs to love and be loved. Everybody needs to clap hands and be happy ... In music, especially this broad category called Jazz, there is a stepping stone towards all of these.
The Blues tell the story of life's difficulties, and if you think for a moment, you will realize that they take the hardest realities of life and put them into music, only to come out with some new hope or sense of triumph.
Sadly, the challenges that plagued me last year continued in my 2024 reading year. However, I was able to finish the following five books. The titles in bold were particularly influential, inspiring or intriguing.
Grief is like the ocean; it comes on waves ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim.
-- Vicki Harrison
The work of a mature human being is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other, and to be stretched large by these two things.
-- Francis Weller
In order to get over [the pain], I had to eat it and digest it. I had to be in that zone. I poured all my heart, all my emotions, all my mental torture into the music. And maybe I'm moving on. I selfishly compose for myself, but I don't think it's selfish because we are just human beings. We do have a lot of differences, but we are much more similar than different. I really truly believe that my very personal story can reach out to and appeal to a lot of people.
-- Jihye Lee
I think sorrow is natural. And I had a friend once in the age when a psychiatrist thought it was a good idea to give you a lot of drugs if you were going through grieving and sorrow, and then you just wouldn't feel it. What that means is you never get over it, because you haven't had that experience, which is a very human one, and everyone has it sooner or later. It's grief. And since I'm now in the land of windows, I'm the person that they phone and they say, "Will this ever be over? How do I get through this?" So one day at a time, but don't expect there to be no sorrow.
There is music in the air, music all around us; the world is full of it, and you simply take as much as you require.
-- Edward Elgar
