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?
If we expected self-reliance of family groups, if we expected hardiness and resilience and initiative on the part of individuals, and if we rewarded initiative instead of dependence on government, we would not only ameliorate many of the family-related social problems we see at present, but we would also reduce our vulnerability to terrorism. People who are hardy, resilient, and self reliant are a lot harder to terrorize.
Death ends a life, not a relationship.
My willingness to be intimate with my own deep feelings creates the space for intimacy with another.
One minute of reconciliation is worth more than a whole life of friendship!
Band-Aids don't fix bullet holes. You say sorry just for show. You live like that, you live with ghosts.
All things I do are in every woman. Every woman is Medea. Every woman is Jocasta. There comes a time when a woman is a mother to her husband. Clytemnestra is every woman when she kills.
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