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 hardest song to write is a protest song, a topical song with meaning.
Indians are marvelous storytellers. In some ways, that oral tradition is stronger than the written tradition.
Fortunately art is a community effort - a small but select community living in a spiritualized world endeavoring to interpret the wars and the solitudes of the flesh.
Marilyn always dreamt of being an actress. She didn't, by the way, dream of being just a star. She dreamt of being an actress. And she had always lived somehow with that dream. And that is why, despite the fact that she became one of the most unusual and outstanding stars of all time, she herself was never satisfied. When she came to New York, she began to perceive the possibilities of really accomplishing her dream, of being an actress.
Architecture does not change anything. It's always on the side of the wealthy. The important thing is to believe that it can make life better.
But most commonly, it's one poem that I work on with a lot of intensity.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.