Every time Jimmy Scott sings, it's the same but slightly different. I don't know how he does that or where he gets that from. I think it's instinct. Nothing he does is by chance; he's in complete control of what he's doing. He's just beautiful and unique.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the unique and instinctive artistry of Jimmy Scott's singing.
Sufjan Stevens admires Jimmy Scott's ability to deliver a consistent yet uniquely different performance each time he sings. This reflects not only Scott's mastery of his craft but also an innate talent that makes his artistic expression beautiful and distinctive, suggesting that great artistry is a blend of instinct and control.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about the nature of artistic expression in music.
I still feel like I have a lot to learn in the realm of sound experimentation, and I think I would like things to get noisier and weirder and more distressed and more aggressive, but I don't know if that's something that would be suitable for public consumption.
I believe that music is a spiritual language. My everyday self is pretty mundane and boring, but when I'm making music it allows for me to communicate a kind of transcendence that I can't communicate otherwise.
I feel like the Internet needs to be disarmed in some way. There needs to be a philosophical undermining of the Internet. We take it too seriously and too literally. For a reference we go to Wikipedia, which is full of inaccuracies and misinformation. It's kind of beautiful - it's all the product of imagination; it's not reality at all.
Musicians are often asked to answer for an entire culture, or for an entire movement. It's a process of commodification. It becomes packaged and summarized in a word like 'emo' or 'grunge'... or 'folk music.' I think that's just language itself, trying to understand the mysteries of the world.
The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider's web. The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem.
Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend.
I don't care if people think I am an overactor, as long as they enjoy what I do. People who think that would call Van Gogh an overpainter.
Publishing a short story can sometimes feel like shouting into the dark... your words come out, and then nothing... but I don't think that's why I tend to write novels rather than stories.
I want to make beautiful things, even if nobody cares.
I feel that if I can show my demise artistically to the public, I can somehow cure my own legend.
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