Here are poignant thoughts that have made a difference in how I approach life and music.

NELSON MANDELA

Our worst fear is not that we are inadequate. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves: "Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?" Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God; your playing small doesn't serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us. It is not just in some of us, it is in everyone and as we let our light shine we unconsciously give others permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

 

MARTHA GRAHAM to AGNES DeMILLE

There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique.

If you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is; nor how valuable it is; nor how it compares with our expressions. It is your business to keep it yours, clearly and directly to keep the channel open.

You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly the urges that motivate you.

Keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatsoever, at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction; a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.

 

CONSIDER THIS

In 1962, four young musicians auditioned for Decca Records. The executive dismissed them saying: "We don't like their sound. Groups of guitars are on the way out." The Beatles left without a contract.

In 1954, Elvis Presley was fired by the manager of the Grand Old Opry' who said: "You ain't goin' nowhere...son. You ought to go back to drivin' a truck."

Alexander Graham Bell, after inventing the telephone was told by then-President Rutherford Hayes: "That's an amazing invention, but who would ever want to use one of them?"

After it took Thomas Edison two thousand tries to invent a light bulb, a young reporter asked him how it felt to fail so many times. "I never failed once," Edison said, "it just happened to be a two thousand step process."