i got fury in my soul

I liked [Laura Nyro’s] name, and that she came from New York City, that strange other world, where West Side Story came from. Living on a farm in Elma, Washington, a small town where I was outcast absolute, it helped me to survive just knowing that somewhere in the universe there was someone with that beautiful name, Laura Nyro, and people cared about her, and there was a city where she walked and the wind lifted her hair. The wind lifted her hair for some magical moment on the cover of New York Tendaberry, my first Laura record, and for me, her greatest work. She was not afraid to show you her strange face, and you could tell she was very comfortable with her body. Something as small as that, something as simple as ‘Look at me, I am different, see me’ can be ingested instantly and change you in a small way, a way that one day might become very large indeed. All of these simple gestures we do seep into and carve the people we meet. Every photograph, every thing, it is part of telling people who we are, part of the great word of God that we speak.

I never met [Laura Nyro], except through her music. It’s not that I think about her much in these years; I don’t. But I don’t need to. Mythological creatures are part of us. And I suspect it is the metaphysical clay of her intention that I work with. So there she is, horse bound, twirling in the cosmos, made of the purple lipstick that only defiant tenderness can bear. All that color, all that eternal burning, all that practice after school. Against the backdrop of time, perhaps nothing less than genius after all—genius being a thing that resonates deeper than its time, that cannot be denied by its creator, that, measured against time, was a courageous and unexpected use of tools; and measured against history, has no relevance to any time but now. […] And this is the gift, you know, inspired from within. It is not what she did but what she was. Where I can discern the truly divine among us, those brushed for a moment by God’s little watercolor. What they do is amazing, yes, but it is because of what they are that the work is profound. Why is ‘Upstairs by a Chinese Lamp’ such an amazing work? Because it is being generated by a spirit wholly bent on love, on bringing love to the listener. I believe that now. I knew the song; it made me dream and made me hope. But now, growing old, I see that the intention of the writer was the thing that made the song live. In performance, the writer tells us many layers more than the music or the lyric can. If the writer is a performer, a great interpreter, like Laura, the inflection and movement reveal that meaning that cannot be spoken, but is understood by most of the people who witness it.