We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
Art is longing. You never arrive, but you keep going in the hope that you will.
You get fed up watching shows with not much care and love, reality programmes where they put people in a house for a fortnight and film them doing everything, or where participants arrive after lunch and do the programme at six.
Stars arrive on their own timetable.
When we arrive at the studio, we put the kettle on, have a cup of tea, say, ‘How’s the family? You still got that old car? Is that dog still alive?’ and then we start jamming. That’s how the songs get written.
I first saw the ocean as a kid. We would drive from Arizona in the summer and arrive as the sun was starting to come down over the hill near Laguna in southern California. We would always sing a song, and it was a big joyous family moment when we came over the hill.
When I play, I stare at the left hand of whoever is playing lead. And I get to know what people are playing well enough that when they start going somewhere, once they arrive, I’m already there.
With all the travel we’re doing to cold-weather cities, your mind definitely starts to wander. It gets you away from the game. Even when you arrive in a city, you’re tempted to just sit in your hotel and rest. Sometimes it’s nice to just get out and walk around, to see what’s there.
We cannot arrive at Shakespeare’s whole dramatic way of looking at the world from his tragedies alone, as we can arrive at Milton’s way of regarding things, or at Wordsworth’s or at Shelley’s, by examining almost any one of their important works.
In grade school I was taught that the United States is a melting pot. People from all over the world come here for freedom and to pursue a better life. They arrive with next to nothing, work incredibly hard, learn a new language and new customs, and in a generation they become an integral part of our amazing nation.
