I think it's really important to give yourself a very big question that you're working on that you can come home to
The heart is what matters most of all
Tell the truth. Sing with passion. Work with laughter. Love with heart. 'Cause that's all that matters in the end.
Roy Orbison was one of the genuinely nicest persons I've ever known. With one of the most beautiful voices in the history of recorded music he could easily have had an opera star's ego, but he was one of the humblest, kindest, sweetest human beings to grace this planet. This in spite of the enormous tragedies in his life. A brave, beautiful blessing of a man.
As soon as you learn to never give up, you have to learn the power and wisdom of unconditional surrender, and that one doesn't cancel out the other; they just exist as contradictions. The wisdom of it comes as you get older.
If you're in it because you love it and you have to do it, that's the right reason. If you're in it because you want to get rich or famous, don't do it. People often say that my first years in Nashville, when I wasn't getting anything cut, were tough. Hell, those were great years.
I want you to know I'm an Army brat; I was a captain in the Army and my brother was a jet pilot in the Navy. So I support our troops; I identify with them. But I sure as hell don't identify with the bastards who sent them over there.
What historians will definitely wonder about in future centuries is how deeply flawed logic, obscured by shrewd and unrelenting propaganda, actually enabled a coalition of powerful special interests to convince nearly everyone in the world that CO2 from human industry was a dangerous, planet-destroying toxin. It will be remembered as the greatest mass delusion in the history of the world - that CO2, the life of plants, was considered for a time to be a deadly poison.
The act of conducting in itself, of waving my arms in the air and being in charge, I didn't miss. I missed the sensual pleasure of being in contact with music.
Some people are faster than others; I'm just figuring it out later, that's all. I'm getting smart too late and old too soon.
I've never been good at the money thing. I have had a couple of really nice but inept managers, and a business accountant that ripped me off. But I cannot totally blame my money making lameness on them.