Musical composition should bring happiness and joy to people and make them forget their troubles.
Basically my influences have been American influences. It’s been blues, gospel, swing era music, bebop music, Broadway show music, classical music.
The ensemble playing is as clean as a whistle. The band plays in tune and with dynamics. Also, there is some fine arranging and orchestrating going on here, and the soloists perform at top level.
Jazz is not background music.
They didn’t dictate to me as to what kind of music that they wanted me to play or what tunes, what musicians that I was going to use. They let me do my thing. That’s one reason I stayed there for twenty-eight years.
It is the love of country that has lighted and that keeps glowing the holy fire of patriotism.
Worry affects the circulation, the heart, the glands, the whole nervous system. I have never known a man who died from over work, but many who died from doubt.
Taking a biopsy often aggravates and stimulates growth – and does not indicate how many secondary tumors have developed.
Thus we see that the all important thing is not killing or giving life, drinking or not drinking, living in the town or the country, being unlucky or lucky, winning or losing. It is how we win, how we lose, how we live or die, finally, how we choose...
Think of Zen, of the Void, of Good and Evil and you are bound hand and foot. Think only and entirely and completely of what you are doing at the moment and you are free as a bird.
What is Zen? Zen is looking at things with the eye of God, that is, becoming the thing’s eyes so that it looks at itself with our eyes.
The object of our lives is to look at, listen to, touch, taste things. Without them, – these sticks, stones, feathers, shells, – there is no Deity.
There is nothing intrinsically more beautiful or poetical about the moon than about a dunghill; if anything, the contrary, for the latter is full of life and warmth and energy.
A thief running away like mad from a ferocious watch-dog may be a splendid example of Zen.
Things have done their part; it is for us to do ours...
What is essential is not the answer but the questions; the answers indeed are the death of the life that is in the questions.
Zen is mind-less activity, that is, Mind-ful activity, and it may often be advisable to emphasize the mind, and say, Take care of the thoughts and the actions will take care of themselves.
Zen is the game of insight, the game of discovering who you are beneath the social masks.
Perfect does not mean perfect actions in a perfect world, bur appropriate actions in an imperfect one.
We that change, hate change. And we that pass, love what abides. Ashes, darkness, dust.