A Dream About Lightning Bugs Quotes

“As you get closer to finding your voice, you’ll feel resistance. You’ll want to retreat. It’s scary to just be you. You may notice that criticism from others starts to sting more, because now it’s personal. You’re being seen and addressed directly, not through the sunglasses you finally removed. But once you’ve relaxed, you can apply the effort to the important part—that which projects and amplifies the expression of the real you. That’s technique.”
― Ben Folds, A Dream about Lightning Bugs: A Life of Music and Cheap Lessons

“an intention that radiates out of you. It’s humility and gratitude. It’s about living inside the notes, and between them, and understanding that each of those notes may mean a completely different thing to each person in an audience. Once it leaves your fingertips or your lips, it’s no longer yours. Maybe it never was.”
― Ben Folds, A Dream about Lightning Bugs: A Life of Music and Cheap Lessons

“I accept that one day, my music will be gone forever. So will the Sistine Chapel, Bruce Lee movies, and all the silly arts and crafts my aunt ever bought. Gone with the wind. Making songs is something I do here and now. Because light captured is just a moment, a flicker.”
― Ben Folds, A Dream About Lightning Bugs: A Life of Music and Cheap Lessons

“I didn’t love every group I encountered. In fact, I’ll be quite happy to never see gun-and-coin dude again. But I learned to stand in other people’s shoes, as much as a child can. It’s hard to view certain people as anything but monsters, yet there’s value in giving it the old college try. By dignifying even the most despicable character as a human being, by offering them what empathy we can manage, we also hold them accountable for their choices.”
― Ben Folds, A Dream about Lightning Bugs: A Life of Music and Cheap Lessons

“I’m amazed when someone sees the sculpture inside a rock while the rest of us just see a rock. I say “hell yes” to the architects who imagine the spaces we will one day live in. And a round of applause for the stylist who sees what hair to cut to make me look respectable for a couple of weeks. I bow low and fast in the direction of those who paint amazing things on the ceilings of chapels, make life-changing movies, or deliver a stand-up routine that recognizes the humor in the mundane. What all those artists have in common is that they point out things that were always there, always dotting the sky. Now we can take it in and live what we missed.”
― Ben Folds, A Dream about Lightning Bugs: A Life of Music and Cheap Lessons

“I highly recommend enforced boredom as a way to develop your imagination. But don’t take my advice; listen to Neil Young. He said it best: “There’s a lot to learn for wasting time.”
― Ben Folds, A Dream about Lightning Bugs: A Life of Music and Cheap Lessons

“It's always the easy way out, being an existential chicken. Not really being there. It's harder, it's riskier, to be present.”
― Ben Folds, A Dream About Lightning Bugs: A Life of Music and Cheap Lessons

“Here's my suggestion to musicians: When you're about to reach for whatever musical tools you use, virtual or real, guitar or computer, ask yourself if you're doing so to save time or because you don't feel like straining your brain. Or, more important, ask yourself if you have anything to say yet. If not, keep working (or playing) upstairs, in your brain. Sure, it's okay to react to what happens when playing with the tools -- or the way a chord sounds, a loop, or even an accident. But make sure you express what you wanted to say or what you imagined. Don't let your tools make you their bitch.”
― Ben Folds, A Dream About Lightning Bugs: A Life of Music and Cheap Lessons

“You always notice the holidays more when you feel the most alone.”
― Ben Folds, A Dream about Lightning Bugs: A Life of Music and Cheap Lessons

“So sure, I had to dig out of a little insecurity hole vocally, but I don’t blame my parents for this. We are all a work in progress.”
― Ben Folds, A Dream about Lightning Bugs: A Life of Music and Cheap Lessons

“People often ask me if it’s scary to make up a song onstage, dictating parts, on the fly, to a full orchestra. Well, no. It doesn’t occur to me to worry about that. I have a jazz musician’s view of mistakes. If you play a wrong note, you can always make the same mistake again on purpose and make it sound right. Insistence on the mistake can be quite musical. Indeed, “once is a mistake, twice is jazz,” a quote often attributed to Miles Davis.”
― Ben Folds, A Dream about Lightning Bugs: A Life of Music and Cheap Lessons

“Sometimes I punch myself hard as I can Yelling “Nobody cares,” hoping someone will tell me how wrong I am”
― Ben Folds, A Dream about Lightning Bugs: A Life of Music and Cheap Lessons

“I came in for what I assumed would be a spanking and instead was leaving with a full music scholarship? For being an asshole? I was blown away!”
― Ben Folds, A Dream about Lightning Bugs: A Life of Music and Cheap Lessons

“But don’t take my advice; listen to Neil Young. He said it best: “There’s a lot to learn for wasting time.”
― Ben Folds, A Dream about Lightning Bugs: A Life of Music and Cheap Lessons

“Finally, empathy and perspective are everything, and neither should be taken for granted. After all, there’s always someone out there who thinks you’re the monster. Remember that the ground beneath your feet can always shift and that it should always be questioned. Even the things that seem still are still changing —From “Still,” Over The Hedge soundtrack, 2004”
― Ben Folds, A Dream about Lightning Bugs: A Life of Music and Cheap Lessons

“By dignifying even the most despicable character as a human being, by offering them what empathy we can manage, we also hold them accountable for their choices.”
― Ben Folds, A Dream about Lightning Bugs: A Life of Music and Cheap Lessons

“I try not to jump to conclusions about anything I feel I've seen or heard before. I try not to write off music my kids play me as "throwback" even if it closely resembles something that I thought was new when I was a kid. Sure, I want to put on the seventies' English band the Jam and say, See! Your new little punk bands are just shiny versions of this! But I'd be wrong. To diminish the new as nothing more than a rehash is a mistake.”
― Ben Folds, A Dream About Lightning Bugs: A Life of Music and Cheap Lessons

“It's a legitimate worry for an aging rocker that your music will become so out of date and toxically uncool, it will get your kids beaten up at school. But, hey, it's your job.”
― Ben Folds, A Dream About Lightning Bugs: A Life of Music and Cheap Lessons

“I don't want to sound like a whiny little bitch. I can certainly appreciate how amazing all this was. How fortunate we were. It was a trip of a lifetime. But the success felt like a detour, oddly. A fluke. When I first sat down to write this book and reflected on this peak time of Ben Folds Five, it was difficult to identify what lessons, if any, could be gleaned and passed on.”
― Ben Folds, A Dream About Lightning Bugs: A Life of Music and Cheap Lessons

“I also have a fond memory of reading our first really bad review in the U.K. It was of a live show at Shepherd's Bush Empire. Most of the piece was dedicated to personal jabs at me. The way I talked, what I wore, how the audience and I deserved each other for being such twats, my sagging weak chin and wimpy shoulders. This reviewer didn't let up on me for two pages. After Robert got through the brutal review, getting more and more upset with each word, completely steamed and ready to fight, he exploded, 'What an asshole! He never mentioned me once.”
― Ben Folds, A Dream About Lightning Bugs: A Life of Music and Cheap Lessons

“You haven't lived until you've been screamed at by an Elvis impersonator until AAA shows up.”
― Ben Folds, A Dream About Lightning Bugs: A Life of Music and Cheap Lessons