Once upon a time there were four little Rabbits, and their names were--Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail, and Peter.
If you can sing it, you can play it.
I tell my students, 'It's an important tradition and you have to go back and hear this music and learn its language all the way through. How are you going to know what's new to play, if you haven't listened to everything that's old?'
I never really sounded like Bird, but that was my mission. I didn't care if people said that I copied him; I loved Bird's playing so much. But Mingus was the one that really pushed me away from the idea and forced me into thinking about having an individual sound and concept. That's what I got from Mingus.
The stories that confirm that bigger story are brought in and easily digested. But there's another set of stories that are always there, which do not confirm, but which complicate and contradict what we think we already know. And I'm always attracted to that. There doesn't seem to be much of a market for it. Translated books rarely get reviewed in the press. Books or poems or works of art that don't seem to have a corresponding style or figure or theme, obviously they're hard to digest.
The Nazis hated culture itself, because it is essentially international and therefore subversive of nationalism. What they called Nazi culture was a local, perverted, nationalistic cult, by which a few major artists and many minor ones were honored for their Germanness, not their talent.
The heart is the place where we live our passions. It is frail and easily broken, but wonderfully resilient. There is no point in trying to deceive the heart. It depends upon our honesty for its survival.
I did everything. I ran my life exactly as I wanted to, all the time. I never listened to anybody. I'm pig-headed.