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To me songwriting is more like redemption. I can extract the poison or the pollen, the essence from a situation and the rest becomes a husk that blows away.

Beth Orton

When I first started writing, a friend said I should be careful because I’m letting people know how to reach right in and play with my workings. And they do!
BETH ORTON

People Play Writing
I don’t read music; I taught myself guitar.
BETH ORTON

Guitar Read Taught
Therapy is like telling your nightmares when you’re a kid; they lose their power to hurt and control.
BETH ORTON

Hurt Kids Nightmare
At about the age of ten, my friends and I discovered the joys of sitting in graveyards drinking merrydown cider and kissing and stealing our elder siblings’ records.
BETH ORTON

Drinking Kissing Sibling
I’d say my greatest fear is fear itself.
BETH ORTON

Good Greatest Fear Say
We’re all like little ants who scurry around with the materials that are at hand right now. Each generation finds new materials. Its just evolution, isn’t it?
BETH ORTON

Generation Glowing Hands
Even when I haven’t had money, I found money to travel. It’s a luxury that’s a kind of necessity, I think.
BETH ORTON

Kind Luxury Thinking
When I was really young I used to collect frog spawn. I made a pond out of an old sink and I loved to spend hours watching the frogs grow.
BETH ORTON

Frogs Hours Ponds
You can have all sorts of relationships, but there’s something with musicians working together where you can have relationship that can just continue to grow in a beautiful way.
BETH ORTON

Beautiful Musician Together Working
I just like the child’s nightmares and therapy, once an experience has found the light of day I’m no longer under its spell, I’m free to tell it. I hope in telling honestly I can in some way help other people to do so also.
BETH ORTON

Children Helping Light Others
To me songwriting is more like redemption. I can extract the poison or the pollen, the essence from a situation and the rest becomes a husk that blows away.
BETH ORTON

Blow Essence Poison
I have a friend who says the best boyfriends are ones with intimidating, good-looking older brothers. The boyfriends try harder because they’re so insecure. Maybe I’m the female equivalent.
BETH ORTON

Brother Insecure Trying
I get told I’m a confessional songwriter, which gets on my tits because I think of negative connotations attached to the word “confessional”. I don’t like the idea of songwriting being therapy. I don’t want to put myself so directly in the foreground.
BETH ORTON

Ideas Negative Thinking
I want it to be more universal than that – like a painter doesn’t have to explain his life story away to justify his painting.
BETH ORTON

Painting Stories Want
I get a feeling, on a guitar, and I sort of mess around until something resonates with me, and then I just find that what happens is that a melody comes, and with that, words.
BETH ORTON

Feelings Guitar Melody
Kissing was something I did a lot of. Kissing in a wheat field as the sun begins to set on a summer’s evening, with the haze of that light.
BETH ORTON

Fields Kissing Summer Wheat

To me songwriting is more like redemption. I can extract the poison or the pollen, the essence from a situation and the rest becomes a husk that blows away.

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To me songwriting is more like redemption. I can extract the poison or the pollen, the essence from a situation and the rest becomes a husk that blows away.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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