Don Was
Don Was
Don Wasis an American musician, record producer and record executive. Primarily a bass player, Was led the 1980s funk rock band Was. In later years he produced songs and albums for a large number of popular recording artists. In 2012, he became president of jazz music label Blue Note Records...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMusician
Date of Birth13 September 1952
CountryUnited States of America
independence culture use
It's no accident that my first novel was called Americana. This was a private declaration of independence, a statement of my intention to use the whole picture, the whole culture.
meaningful laughter real
Doesn't seem quite real. It's not meaningful. I can't quite imagine myself being 73. That's the age my father was! [Laughter.] How can I be his age? It's weird.
country war men
War is the form nostalgia takes when men are hard-pressed to say something good about their country.
heart self giving
Why shouldn't the death of a person you love bring you into lurid ruin? You don't know how to love the one you love until they disappear abruptly. Then you understand how thinly distanced from their suffering, how sparing of self you often were, only rarely unguarded of heart, working your networks of give-and-take.
eye agreement cities
Eye contact was a delicate matter. A quarter second of a shared glance was a violation of agreements that made the city operational.
belief computer willing
Be willing to die for your beliefs, or computer printouts of your beliefs.
art challenges culture
If any art form can accommodate contemporary culture, it's the novel. It's so malleable - it can incorporate essays, poetry, film. Maybe the challenge for the novelist is to stretch his art and his language, to the point where it can finally describe what's happening around him.
fall past
It is all falling indelibly into the past.
reality vision trying
When I work, I'm just translating the world around me in what seems to be straightforward terms. For my readers, this is sometimes a vision that's not familiar. But I'm not trying to manipulate reality. This is just what I see and hear.
two people television
For most people, there are only two places in the world. Where they live and their TV set. If a thing happens on television, we have every right to find it fascinating, whatever it is.
technology violence
Technology and violence are interdependent.
driven dishes ifs
...Because what's the meaning of doing dishes if you're not driven by something beyond necessity.
serious easy hard
Why is it so hard to be serious, so easy to be too serious?
epic cities people
It's all about time, dimwit time, inferior time, people checking watches and other devices, other reminders. This is time draining out of our lives. Cities were built to measure time, to remove time from nature. There's an endless counting down, he said. When you strip away surfaces, when you see into it, what's left is terror. This is the thing that literature was meant to cure. The epic poem, the bedtime story.