It's not possible to build a piece that stands successfully without talking about its shape. But if you talk too much, you lead people away from the music itself.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
When one puts up a building one makes an elaborate scaffold to get everything into its proper place. But when one takes the scaffold down, the building must stand by itself with no trace of the means by which it was erected. That is how a musician should work.
Music is so 100 percent for me that the idea of giving that up in any way, shape, or form would be terrifying to me.
The basic idea is always constructed around piano or guitar and a voice, that's what we live and die by, because if you build up from that foundation, it's going to be strong.
I find there is room in music to talk with music. It may expand ways people can participate with music. It doesn't sound hokey or like some kind of voice-over.
You can't improvise without a skeletal structure; you can't just go in and start talking. This is a very misunderstood craft because no one else makes movies like this.
I don't sit and write stand-up material; I come up with an idea onstage.
The music comes through me, and I let it come the way it comes, and it shapes itself. I just hold space for it. I don't intend to write it for a purpose, but it comes as it comes and am proud of the way it can support change because I believe strongly in what I sing about.
This stand wasn't because I feel like I'm being put down in any kind of way. This is because I'm seeing things happen to people that don't have a voice: people that don't have a platform to talk and have their voices heard and affect change. So I'm in the position where I can do that, and I'm going to do that for people that can't.
Music can be such a vulnerable thing, so when you're delivering a vocal or writing a piece of music, it's easy to get sideways.
The structural thinking I use in the concert hall is unnecessary to most film projects, and most film composers make better use of the enormous range of pop and other materials and techniques required of them than I probably would, faced with the same challenge.