Quotes About Performance

My last public performance for money was in 1967. For free, it was 1972, with the exception of two little one-shot, one-song things. But that's just for friends, out of friendship for the people involved, and also because it was fun.

I have actual dreams of Bruce Springsteen calling me up on stage to wear a bandanna and play rhythm guitar next to Little Steven.

The simple act of playing positive attention to people has a great deal to do with productivity.

after Gordon MacRae sings "I Only Have Eyes for You" in his beautiful tenor voice, his

Hey, everybody, I got the part! I'm going to play Puck." He opened the door to the room and saw Todd sitting there. "Hey, I'm Puck!" "Puck you! Pipe down," yelled a voice down the hall.

We're actors - we're the opposite of people.

We're actors — we're the opposite of people!

We do on stage things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else.

Human attention, in the best of circumstances, is a fluid but fragile entity. Beyond a certain threshold, the more that is asked of it, the less well it performs. When this happens in a psychological experiment, it is interesting. When it happens in traffic, it can be fatal.

What is admired is success, achievement, the quality of performance," writes the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, "rather than the quality of experience." But what if we don't want to become virtuoso musicians or renowned artists? What if we only want to dabble in these things, to see if they might subtly change our outlook on the world or even, as we try to learn them, change us? What if we just want to enjoy them?

We live in an age of high performance, in which everyone is supposed to be constantly maximizing their potential, living their "best life." Social media has made everything from marriage proposals to this morning's breakfast into exquisitely choreographed, unsubtly competitive rituals. The ethos of work—"the long arm of the job," as one scholar put it—pervades our leisure, to the extent that we even have any.

We "overvalue performance," as one psychologist put it, "and undervalue the self." We're afraid of being just okay at things. This is a trap. "For to permit yourself to do only that which you're good at," writes the legal scholar Tim Wu, "is to be trapped in a cage whose bars are not steel but self-judgment.

Letting someone else's ideas about performance stop you from trying something means relinquishing your freedom.

Our confidence has been so shaken by this cult of expertise and performance that when we don't perceive ourselves to be experts at something, we're almost expected to outsource the task who someone who does.

But then I'm one of those guys that is still a bit afraid of the telephone, its implications for conversation. I still wonder if the jukebox might be the death of live music.

Sometimes the magnetism of a song is impossible to ignore, and it demands that it be sung in a certain way.

There's not much difference between what I appear to be on stage and what I am. I think people like that, that I'm not trying to pull a caper.

Oh, I'm not a percussionist, I just like to hit things.

Never have your wallet with you onstage. It's bad luck. You shouldn't play the piano with money in your pocket. Play like you need the money. Tom Waits (to me, about 1986 or so)

Singing is just doing interesting things to the air. Elongating it and twisting it into shapes.

Songs are really just interesting things to be doing with the air

A lot of guys who have have never choked, have never been in the position to do so

If a course needs to be in great condition to be played effectively, then the design strategy is flawed.

When you're doing the traditional musicals, singing songs that are 40 and 50 years old, you realize there's a reason why those musicals are hits. These are amazing songs!