“My particular obsession is with the voice. Everyone on the face of the earth has not only the voice by which they communicate words and sounds, but they have what I can only call a psychic or spiritual voice, which effects the timbre and the quality of the sounds they emit, not to mention the stories they tell. One’s voice is the means by which your soul gets let out to wander and play and finds friends to play with—if I were to put it on a really remedial level. The voice is not only auditory—it is literary. These very words I’m saying to you are coming through the voice that is working for me today. The cultivation and the husbanding of the voice is a lifelong habit and requirement. This is why I read and re-read things. I want to see how the writer got his soul around a particular obsession and then chose to share it through words orchestrated on a page. This is why I can’t be in a silent house for very long. I need music, so I can try to understand how composers and musicians transmitted a story through the tools at their command. This is why I become obsessed with singers, who are among our greatest storytellers. The name of the game is communication—not art. Art happens if you happen to be an artist. It cannot be forced. One can’t work at being an artist. One only works and prays that things work well. Ella Fitzgerald never got in the way of a song—it poured through her and rolled toward your feet like a warm wave. Hers was a seductive, trusting voice: She knew you would wait for it to wash up over your feet and ankles. Barbra Streisand is a great artist, but she has no trust: There are too many tricks and theatrical gestures that she feels she needs to keep you listening. Try listening to Streisand all afternoon. It won’t work. I can last about an hour, and then I’m tired. I’m tired for her and I’m tired for myself. In art you simply cannot fake it.”