Songwriting is about getting the demon out of me. It's like being possessed.
Interpretation
Songwriting serves as a cathartic expression for artists to release their inner struggles and emotions.
In this quote, John Lennon likens the process of songwriting to an exorcism of personal demons. He suggests that creating music is a powerful and almost supernatural experience, allowing him to channel intense emotions, thoughts, and conflicts in a way that is both liberating and transformative.
In practice
During a workshop on songwriting, this quote could be shared to illustrate the emotional depth music can provide.
When I get older losing my hair many years from now. Will you still be sending me a Valentine. Birthday greetings, bottle of wine? If I'd been out till quarter to three would you lock the door? Will you still need me, will you still feed me, When I'm sixty-four?
The writing of the Beatles, or John and Paul's contribution to the Beatles in the late sixties - had a kind of depth to it, a more mature, more intellectual approach. We were different people, we were older. We knew each other in all kinds of different ways than when we wrote together as teenagers and in our older twenties.
I put things down on sheets of paper and stuff them in my pockets. When I have enough, I have a book.
Guilt for being rich, and guilt thinking that perhaps love and peace isn't enough and you have to go and get shot or something.
I regret profoundly that I was not an American and not born in Greenwich Village. It might be dying, and there might be a lot of dirt in the air you breathe, but this is where it's happening.
I've been baking bread and looking after the baby...Everyone else who has asked me that question over the last few years says. 'But what else have you been doing?' To which I say, 'Are you kidding?' Because bread and babies, as every housewife knows, is a full-time job. After I made the loaves [of bread,] I felt like I had conquered something. But as I watched the bread being eaten, I thought, Well, Jesus, don't I get a gold record or knighted or nothing?
From the night, his solitude, the poet finds day and starts a diary that is lethal to the inert. The dark landscape yields a dialogue.
All objects, all phases of culture are alive. They have voices. They speak of their history and interrelatedness. And they are all talking at once!
I have no sense of a model or predecessor when I write a memoir: For me, the form exists as a method of processing material that retains too many connections to life to be approached strictly and aesthetically. A memoir is a risk, a one-off, a bastard child.
If you imagine the world listening, you'll never write a line. That's why privacy is so important. You should write first drafts as if they will never be shown to anyone.
Like I can't cry for myself so I will let this song take all of the things inside I can't let anyone else see and offer it up, as if the sound were some kind of god, and my pain is some kind of sacrifice.
I have said no to many, many Day of the Dead projects in the past, about 10 or 15, because every time I heard a take it was from someone who didn't know the celebration.
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