Quote of the Day (Anna Akhmatova, on How ‘Something Miraculous Burns in Music’)

“Something miraculous burns in music;
as you watch, its edges crystallize.
Only music speaks to me
when others turn away their eyes.”—Russian poet Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966), “Music (For Dmitri Shostakovich),” in The Stray Dog Cabaret: A Book of Russian Poems, translated by Paul Schmidt (2006)

Quote of the Day (Alicia Keys, on What a Song Can Do)

“With a song, you can’t explain exactly what happens or when it’s going to happen or what it’s going to do to you or somebody else. But somehow, it’s this beautiful conduit that connects everybody in a way nothing else can.”—Grammy-winning American singer-songwriter Alicia Keys quoted in “Points to Ponder,” Reader’s Digest, March 2016

The image accompanying this post, of Alicia Keys at the 2011 Walmart Shareholders Meeting, was taken June 3, 2011, by Walmart Stores.

Quote of the Day (Hermann Hesse, on Music, ‘A Continual Consolation’)

“It has been a continual consolation to me and a justification for all life that there is music in the world, that one can at times be deeply moved by rhythms and pervaded by harmonies. Oh, music! A melody occurs to you; you sing it silently, inwardly only; you steep your being in it; it takes possession of all your strength and emotions, and during the time it lives in you, it effaces all that is fortuitous, evil, coarse and sad in you; it brings the world into harmony with you, it makes burdens light and gives wings to the benumbed! The melody of a folk song can do all that. And first of all the harmony! For each pleasing harmony of clearly combined notes, perhaps in one chord, charms and delights the spirit, and the feeling is intensified with each additional note; it can at times fill the heart with joy and make it tremble with bliss as no other sensual pleasure can do.” — Swiss Nobel Prize-winning novelist Hermann Hesse (1877-1962), Gertrude (1910), translated by Hilda Rosner

Quote of the Day (John Sayles, on Music and Movies)

“Movies are visceral as well as intellectual. Unless you give someone a CD to listen while reading a book you don’t have the same experience you do with film, which allows you to use music in incredible ways.  In a movie you have this whole other thing you can do – rhythm [is] the spine of the story. I use music sparingly though and this is the reason some people come out of my films saying what was that. We don’t have wall-to-wall orchestral movie music telling them how to feel.   In doing that, I do lose some people but it’s really, really important to use music to support the story.” — Indie actor-screenwriter-director-novelist John Sayles interviewed by Antonio D’Ambrosio, “An Interview with John Sayles,” The Believer (Issue 61, March 2009)

Quote of the Day (Sir James MacMillan, on Music and Sacrifice)

“Music can transform our lives. We all have favourite musics, or even music that takes us by surprise, that we can in retrospect see as a crucial, defining moment in our lives, which has changed us in some way. But in order for music to do that, I think the human soul has to be ready to sacrifice something, sacrifice a certain amount of our time; something of our attention, something of our active listening. Music’s not something which can just wash over us. It needs us to sacrifice something of ourselves to meet it, and it’s very difficult sometimes to do that, especially the whole culture we’re in. Sacrifice and self-sacrifice – certainly sacrificing your time – is not valued anymore.”—Scottish classical composer and conductor Sir James MacMillan, “High Priest of Music,” Classic CD, May 1999

The image accompanying this post of Sir James MacMillan was taken Aug. 9, 2012, at "Meet the Composers," a panel discussion hosted by Music Director Marin Alsop, at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, and provided by CTV Santa Cruz County.

Quote of the Day (Ray Davies, on Why ‘It’s Critical To Be in the Now')

“You’ll never be able to be what you were. You’ll never achieve what you achieved before. It’s critical to be in the now. This is what I am, this is how I speak, this is what I write – take it or leave it. Thankfully, people have continued to take it rather than leave it.” —English rock ‘n’ roll singer-songwriter Sir Ray Davies, on creating new material, interviewed by Andy Greene, in “The Last Word: Ray Davies,” Rolling Stone, Apr. 6, 2017

Happy birthday to Ray Davies, born 80 years ago today in London. Unlike many other British Invasion musicians, Davies—whether fronting The Kinks or soloing—never really became relegated to a novelty act.

Part of the reason why comes from the venturesome spirit indicated by the above quote, but the rest comes from a character that, to use one word, is “complicated”—and, to use more, might be “shy,” “insecure,” “troubled,” and “turbulent.”

All those terms apply equally to how he has been viewed by his romantic partners (including fellow singer-songwriter Chrissy Hynde) and younger brother and Kinks bandmate Dave Davies.

But an equally useful word for him might be “engaged”: engaged with “the now,” and with the past—including the working-class environment in which he grew up, and its discomfort with and alienation from a rapidly changing culture.

Davies fans have their own favorites among the tunes from the musician’s long career. Mine might belong to, for want of a better term, the middle phase of The Kinks’ career—“Celluloid Heroes,” “Misfits,” and “Better Things." 

They spring from a sensitivity and sense of hope that, despite a personality that he described, in a 2011 Guardian interview, as “easy to love…but impossible to live with,” remains rooted in an abiding interest in other characters.

(Unlike Colin Gawel’s August 2014 post on the “Pencil Storm” blog, I would not go so far as to say, “Ray Davies Is the Best Songwriter.” But I thank him for bringing to my attention the 1986 song “Working at the Factory,” in which Davies yokes his youthful angst with his later rage against “the corporations and big combines” who “turned musicians into factory workers on assembly lines.”)

Quote of the Day (Albert Camus, on Music, ‘The Expression of an Unknowable Reality’)

"Music is the expression of an unknowable reality. This reality makes do with a single translation, the most beautiful and the noblest of all. The translation, Music, allows us to form, with the feeble elements at our disposition and by the route of our imperfect minds, an ideal world, which is particular to each one of us, which differs from one person to another.”—French Nobel Literature laureate Albert Camus (1913-1960), “Essay on Music,” in Cahiers II: Youthful Writings, translated by Ellen Conroy Kennedy (1976)

Quote of the Day (Bob Dylan, on Music and Time)

“[M]usic… is of a time but also timeless; a thing with which to make memories and the memory itself. Though we seldom consider it, music is built in time as surely as a sculptor or welder works in physical space. Music transcends time by living within it.”—American singer-songwriter—and Nobel Literature laureate—Bob Dylan, The Philosophy of Modern Song (2022)

Quote of the Day (Feist, on the ‘Quiet Little Line’ Between Writing Music and Listening to It)

“I always think about how I'm in my room alone writing it, and eventually most people listen to music alone. So there's actually a quiet little direct line between writing and listening. It's a strange bubble of solitude, because you're linked, but you don't know each other, yet you're communicating.''—Canadian singer-songwriter Feist in Jon Pareles, “The Bounty of Solitude,” The New York Times, Sept. 18, 2011

The image accompanying this post, showing Feist at Day 2 of Coachella, was taken April 21, 2012 by Jason Persse.

Quote of the Day (John Powell, on How We Experience Music)

“We try to make sense out of everything we experience — including music. When we hear a new piece, we use the large mental library of music we have already heard to give us some context, and we unconsciously construct a set of expectations — we predict that the tune will rise or fall, get louder or softer — and we are often right. We find it pleasant if our expectations are frustrated occasionally, but we don't expect to be wildly donkey. Rather like the way you didn't expect the word ‘donkey’ just then.” —Scientist and musician John Powell, Why You Love Music: From Mozart to Metallica—The Emotional Power of Beautiful Sounds (2016)

Quote of the Day (Jojo Moyes, on How Music Can ‘Unlock Things in You’)

“I hadn’t realized that music could unlock things in you, could transport you to somewhere even the composer hadn’t predicted. It left an imprint in the air around you, as if you carried its remnants with you when you went.” — English journalist, novelist and screenwriter Jojo Moyes, Me Before You (2012)

(The accompanying photo of Jojo Moyes at the Salon Livre Paris was taken by Claire Onirik on Mar. 25, 2017.)

Quote of the Day (Melissa Errico, on Music, Memory and History)

“Music is all about how we turn big questions about memory and history into the personal ones of living in and out of the past. A lot of my job as a performer is to make the archival past available to people, American Songbook stuff. I try to make it occur now—not just for my emotions, for your emotions. I think it’s very healing. Nostalgia is sort of a pejorative word, but it’s an essential feeling. Nostalgia suits me because I can speak on its behalf. I have history now, but I didn’t have it before. While other people are saying, ‘Oh, poor you; you’re an older actress,’ I’m thinking, Are you kidding me? I’ve never had more information to share. I’m not just an information bearer. I try to take in information, but my next step is to make it raw and expansive and natural and available.”—Singer-actress Melissa Errico quoted in “Soapbox—The Columnists: WSJ. Asks Six Luminaries to Weigh in on a Single Topic. This Month: Nostalgia,” WSJ.com, October 2019

Quote of the Day (Daniel Levitin, on Diverse Users of Music's Power)

“The power of music to evoke emotions is harnessed by advertising executives, filmmakers, military commanders, and mothers. Advertisers use music to make a soft drink, beer, running shoe or car seem more hip than their competitors. Film directors use music to tell us how to feel about scenes that otherwise might be ambiguous, or to augment our feelings at particularly dramatic moments. Think of a typical chase scene in an action film, or the music that might accompany a lone woman climbing a staircase in a dark old mansion: music is being used to manipulate our emotions, and we tend to accept, if not outright enjoy, the power of music to make us experience these different feelings. Mothers throughout the world, and as far back in time as we can imagine, have used soft singing to soothe their babies to sleep, or to distract them from something that has made them cry.” —American-Canadian psychologist, neuroscientist, musician, and record producer Daniel J. Levitin, This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession (2006)

Photo of Daniel Levitin taken at McGill Alumni London Talk Series, Dec. 17, 2015, by Quebec 2015.

TV Quote of the Day (‘Seinfeld,’ on Music and Madness)

(George Costanza enters Jerry’s apartment singing "Master of the House," a Les Miserables show tune)

George [played by Jason Alexander]: "Master of the house… doling out the charm, ready with a handshake and an open palm. Tells a saucy tale, loves to make a stir, everyone appreciates a.."

Jerry [played by Jerry Seinfeld]: “What is that song?”

George: “Oh, it's from Les Miserables. I went to see it last week. I can't get it out of my head. I just keep singing it over and over. It just comes out. I have no control over it. I'm singing it on elevators, buses. I sing it in front of clients. It's taking over my life.”

Jerry: “You know, Schumann went mad from that.”

George: “Artie Schumann? From Camp Hatchapee?”

Jerry: “No, you idiot.”

George: “What are you, Bud Abbott? What, are you calling me an idiot?”

Jerry: “You don't know Robert Schumann? The composer?”

George: “Oh, Schu-MANN. Of course.”

Jerry: (Trying to scare George) “He went crazy from one note. He couldn't get it out of his head. I think it was an A. He kept repeating it over and over again. He had to be institutionalized.”

George: “Really? …Well, what if it doesn't stop?” (Jerry gestures "That's the breaks." George gasps.) “Oh, that I really needed to hear. That helps a lot!”— Seinfeld, Season 2, Episode 3, “The Jacket,” teleplay by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld, directed by Tom Cherones

Even Jerry’s scare tactic isn’t enough to prevent George from breaking into song at an inopportune moment, prompting the fearsome father of friend Elaine Benes to bark, “Pipe down, chorus boy!”

Quote of the Day (Marin Alsop, on Music and ‘This World of Possibility and Sense of Joy’)

“Music enables me at particularly difficult moments to open up to this world of possibility and sense of joy. Nothing else gives me that feeling.”—Marin Alsop, music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and the Sao Paolo Symphony Orchestra, quoted in “Soapbox: The Columnists—This Month: WSJ Asks Six Luminaries to Weigh in on a Single Topic; This Month: Music,” WSJ.com, September 2019 issue

Quote of the Day (Jazzman Sonny Rollins, on the Need to ‘Live Your Life Now in a Positive Way’)

‘I can hear music that elevates me, but on the other hand there’s martial music that’s made to make people go to war. So music is neutral. It has nothing to do with ethics. Music is not on the same level as trying to understand life. We’re here for 80-something years. One lifetime is not enough to get it right. I’ll be back in another body. I’m not interested in trying to get that technical about that because I don’t need to know. What I need to know is that being a person who understands that giving is better than getting is the proper way to live. Live your life now in a positive way. Help people if you can. Don’t hurt people. That works perfectly for me, man.”—Retired jazz saxophone master Sonny Rollins quoted in David Marchese, “Sonny Rollins, on Whether Great Musicians Make Good People,” The New York Times Magazine, Mar. 1, 2020

(Photo of Sonny Rollins taken July 17, 2009, by Bengt Nyman from Vaxholm, Sweden.)

Quote of the Day (Nobel Laureate Kazuo Ishiguro, on the ‘Big Overlap Between Fiction and Song’)

“I've been writing songs since age 15, and for me there's always been a big overlap between fiction and song. My style as a novelist comes substantially from what I learnt writing songs. The intimate, first-person quality of a singer performing to an audience, for instance, carried over for me into novels. As did the need to approach meaning subtly, sometimes by nudging it into the spaces between the lines. You have to do that all the time when writing lyrics for someone to sing.” — Japanese-born British Nobel Prize-winning novelist Kazuo Ishiguro (The Remains of the Day), interviewed for “By the Book,” The New York Times Book Review, Mar. 8, 2015

Quote of the Day (Author Jacqueline Woodson, on Experiencing Music as a Youth and Adult)

“When you're young, music is evocative of a future and a promise, and when you're an adult, it's evocative of the past."—Young adult novelist Jacqueline Woodson, quoted in “Soapbox: The Columnists—This Month: WSJ Asks Six Luminaries to Weigh in on a Single Topic; This Month: Music,” WSJ.com, September 2019 issue

(Photo of Jacqueline Woodson taken at the 2018 U.S. National Book Festival, Sept. 1, 2018, by Fuzheado.)

Quote of the Day (Liberace, Reacting to His Reviews)

"When the reviews are bad I tell my staff that they can join me as I cry all the way to the bank."—Pianist and flamboyant showman Liberace (1919-1987), Liberace: An Autobiography (1973)

From the Fifties through the Seventies, Liberace—born 100 years ago today in West Allis, Wisconsin—endured one critical brickbat after another. But as this quote indicates, he just chuckled and shrugged it off, taking solace in being one of the best-paid entertainers in America.

What he could not shrug off were suggestions that he might be homosexual. In the late 1950s, he brought a lawsuit against someone claiming exactly that. But the protests became more hollow with time, especially by the mid-1980s, when a severe weight loss was attributed to a strict watermelon diet. The coroner’s eventual verdict about his death in 1987—AIDS—merely confirmed growing suspicions about his last illness.

The mocking showman, it turned out, cared more about what people thought than he ever let on. It wasn’t just that he guarded knowledge of his sexual orientation so zealously (a “secret” that really wasn’t a secret), but that he hoped that, by setting up scholarships for deserving young musical students, he would be remembered for contributing something important to music. But most people still know him as a campy showman. 

Donning outrageous outfits like his star-spangled shorts or 200-pound “King Neptune” costume might have won him considerable attention and money, but without them, he might have won more respect for his considerable talent. (He had been a child prodigy growing up.)