I mangle phrases constantly. The other day I was chatting with my boyfriend and I said to him, 'He really sold him under the bus.' And he said, 'I think you meant 'threw him under the bus,' or 'sold him up the river.'
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
If my kids were to make a talking doll of me as a mother, one of my recorded phrases would be 'I will throw that in the trash.' 'If you don't put that down right now, I will throw that in the trash.' It's very funny to hear myself say certain things - like noticing which phrases become the most popular to use.
At my house, it's an, 'If dad says it, you can say it' kind of deal, so a lot of my slang words come off very childish at this point in my career.
The hardest portion of English, I must say it: Idioms.
Like, What is the least often heard sentence in the English language? That would be: Say, isn't that the banjo player's Porsche parked outside?
Words may show a man's wit but actions his meaning.
My mother tongue, Mende, is very expressive, very figurative, and when I write, I always struggle to find the English equivalent of things that I really want to say in Mende. For example, in Mende, you wouldn't say 'night came suddenly'; you would say 'the sky rolled over and changed its sides.'
When I am seriously composing, sometimes a phrase will come into my head, a catch phrase. When I was writing pop songs for a few years, as a career, separate from my folksinging career, I used to write songs for pop singers.
I went from selling everything to saying, 'I ain't gonna sell that. Can't do it.' It wasn't working for me, so I was just like, 'Yo, I'm going to sell my talent.'
When I play, maybe 'Back o' Town Blues,' I'm thinking about one of the old, low-down moments - when maybe your woman didn't treat you right. That's a hell of a moment when a woman tell you, 'I got another mule in my stall.'
Have you ever heard a good joke? If you've ever heard someone just right, with the right pacing, then you're already on the way to poetry. It's about using words in very precise ways and using gesture.