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 ORTONI 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 ORTONI don’t believe in trouble. Because I think that trouble is sometimes good, sometimes bad. I’ve been known to be called trouble, which I think is quite a compliment. But I suppose, thinking about it, that my best and worst trouble has always had something to do with a man.
BETH ORTONI didn’t jump a lot of trees because I didn’t like heights. I liked getting a mirror and walking around with it facing the sky. I’d imagine I was walking in the tops of the trees and falling into the sky, or walking up the stairs whilst going down.
BETH ORTONI 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 ORTONI was scared of the Bible – it seemed whenever I read it I got bad luck. Then I befriended a couple of Jesus’s disciples and I used to show them modern life – how to run the hot and cold taps and things like that. They seemed alright but it didn’t change my feelings about the Bible jinx.
BETH ORTONI 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 ORTONTherapy is like telling your nightmares when you’re a kid; they lose their power to hurt and control.
BETH ORTONI’d say my greatest fear is fear itself.
BETH ORTONYou 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 ORTONFrom the beginning, I wanted to make dance music with a human element to it.
BETH ORTONHeaven is what we spend our lives trying to find.
BETH ORTONI 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 ORTONOne time I completely thought I’d turned into a werewolf and was sure I could see hairs sprouting from my face. At those times I’d suddenly go very quiet and not talk to anyone, stunned from the developments, being a werewolf and all.
BETH ORTONKissing 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 ORTONMy manager said the next best inspiration to heartbreak is travel, and it’s true.
BETH ORTONTo 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