Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The paintings are transferred from my computer to a disk, and I can hand it to the printer this way; or I can modem the painting to the printer over the phone lines from my house in Hawaii.
I sang a song in Hindi; nobody even knew what that was. Singing about Native American issues, nobody did that... I had no reason to want to copy anybody else... All I had was my originality.
I'm not like a professional writer with professional skills. Songs kind of come into my head the same way they did when I was a kid. I say I'm an overgrown kindergarten kid. I work on songs.
The art of the three-minute song is more like journalism than writing a big 400-page book. You want to be brief, you want to make sense right yen and there. And sometimes that takes a bit of work.
When we draw on the tablet, the drawing shows up on the computer screen. If we have chosen to tell the computer that the stylist is to behave like a piece of chalk, or a pen, or a wet brush, it will.
I'm so happy to be a song-writer - I'm even surprised when I get to record anything. I consider it a considerable privilege and a blessing to have a medium of expression that has a place in the world.
But in the old days, visual artists used to fall into two distinct categories: those of us who created images with cameras and those of us who applied stuff onto other stuff, with brushes or other tools.
I had a teacher's degree and a degree in Oriental Philosophy from the University of Massachusetts. I thought I was going to India to study but all of a sudden, I had a career in music. It really surprised me.
I feel sorry for people of good heart who have never had a chance to learn the realities of Native American everything - not just our history but the sweetness and the beauty and the reasons why were so close to Mother Earth.
Language and culture cannot be separated. Language is vital to understanding our unique cultural perspectives. Language is a tool that is used to explore and experience our cultures and the perspectives that are embedded in our cultures.
I've had a different kind of career on the periphery of show business. I've never been on any kind of corporate timetable whereby every six months I have to pop out a record like a pulping mill. I've called my own shots. When I get tired, I take time off.
I've always had that attitude about my career: it's something that I do, but it's not my whole life. I have a real life, a personal life: I've got a lot of chickens, I've got a horse, I've got a kitty-cat, I've got a lot of goats, I've got animals all over the place.
We also have the option of scanning in an image from outside the computer... a photo, or a sketch done with traditional tools; and we can then paint, manipulate, process, change, and further develop the image within the computer, watching our progress on the monitor.
I was adopted without the benefit of papers. They used to hide adoption in the forties; I don't know why. Perhaps it was shameful. I could have been kidnapped - there are all kinds of crazy things that people have done - but I got over dealing with that a long time ago.
When I was three, I didn't play with other kids very much; I was kind of isolated. I got used to be being bullied and having to think my way out of situations in the same way that other kids would fight their way out. Then I discovered a piano, and it became my playmate.
Grab a guitar, put some kind of strings on it, a banjo string, then a violin string, then a guitar string, tune it any way you want, and make some noise, and see what you get. And work on it until you get something that you think is interesting. That's all there is to art for me.
As a teenager I started painting and playing guitar...Music has been my playmate, my lover, and my crying towel...This song ("Until It's Time for You To Go") popped into my head while I was falling in love with someone I knew couldn't stay with me. The words are about honesty and freedom inside the heart.
Take a bunch of little kids to the beach and they all make art. Adults are too stupid to call it art, but it is art. They'll use their imaginations, make drama, make up characters, make pictures in the sand, they'll make up songs that no one's ever heard before. All kids, I think, are creative, but they get it pounded out of them in school.
It never occurred to me that I was important enough to have some politician go out of his way to silence me. I only found out about it in the '80s by accident - a broadcaster announced they received letters of commendation from the White House for having suppressed my music. My career was so highly impacted in the U.S. it will never recover.
What can government do? They can listen to their own people. But I'll tell you what citizens can do, when we elect one of these people - whether we think it's a good guy or a bozo - you got to stay on the case. You don't vote and go home and give them the keys to the car, he'll drive you right off a cliff. You have to help people to stay honest.
There is an exercise I teach at colleges: Get yourself a canvas and a bunch of acrylics and go into a very dimly lighted room. Dip a brush into one of the colors, slap it on the canvas, don't look, close your eyes, make a painting, don't look, turn the lights on and see what you've got. I think this releases people from the editor in their life that's always standing over their shoulder saying, "Oh, you don't have any talent; who do you think you are?"