“It’s gobbledygook; ‘Come Together’ was an expression that Timothy Leary had come up with for his attempt at being president or whatever he wanted to be, and he asked me to write a campaign song. I tried and tried, but I couldn’t come up with one. But I came up with this, ‘Come Together’, which would have been no good to him – you couldn’t have a campaign song like that, right?”
“Art is just a stupid obsession, but nothing gets the job done like an obsessed person.”
“It was Keith’s great riff, and I wrote the rest. The funny thing was that it turned into this reggae song after two takes. And that take on ‘Tattoo You’ was the only take that was a complete rock and roll take. And then it went to reggae completely for about 20 takes, and that’s why everyone said, “Oh, that’s crap. We don’t want to use that.” And no one went back to Take 2, which was the one we used, the rock track.”
It's a cliché to state that one should think like a child, but it's clear that kids know something that the world tries to make you unlearn later in life. There's so many strategies people use to try to get that something back, and most of them don't work. It's hard to stay positive when there's a lot of evil in the world. Life is hard, you're tired, and there's disease. The strategy that works for children is to be delighted by the things that delight you. →
John Darnielle (of The Mountain Goats) is still a pretty wise fellow. On that note, please delight in the things that delight you. I have been practicing wise old Kurt Vonnegut’s quote, “If this isn’t nice, then I don’t know what is”. Treasure the simple times!
No, no, no, it's not about being in control or having power. It's about realizing that I have a choice in what I feel. Like today, I was feeling really, like, What's going on? And then I realized it's the moon. There's a full moon tonight. And so in my heart I was like, "No, it's because there's something wrong!" And then I was like, No, I'm gonna choose to think, "It's the full moon, dummy." →
Wise words and nice interview with Chan Marshall (Cat Power)