Vienna Teng: The Moment Always Vanishing
The following quotes are from Vienna Teng's live album titled, "The Moment Always Vanishing". These are quotes from her conversations with the audience. I love her, she is so witty and astute. I know somebody said this of her, she's probably this generation's modern day bard. It's one of my dreams to see her live.
"I normally write most songs by myself which is a very slow, painstaking, bashing-your-head-against-the-wall, kind of process."
"This next song (Homecoming) was a song that I wrote while still working as a software engineer in Cisco. It was actually a great place to work, really cool people, and it was a great company and I was not cut out to be a software engineer for more than 6 months, I discovered. And after awhile, I started to imagine all sorts of things other than commuting to a cubicle. And one of the things that I thought that would be interesting to imagine would be driving for a living. Like pulling 12-hour shifts across some of the bigger states in the Western part of the United States. And so, that's where this song is set from the point of view who does a hell of a lot of driving and it's called, 'Homecoming.'"
"It's a lot easier to write sad, pensive, moody songs than it is to write happy songs. At least for me, I would maintain that it's hard for anybody because when you're happy, you're busy being happy, you're not busy picking it apart, writing about it and obsessing in your diary over this thing."
"This is a song (Grandmother Song) written from the point of view of my paternal grandmother who is a very opinionated and strong woman, who has lived through a lot, has seen a lot, and has very specific ideas of what a young woman ought to be doing with a life full of opportunities when she gets in America. And pursuing a music career is not really in there, anywhere. And being single over 30 is not really in there. So we've had some talks over the years, and I've finally gotten to an age where I realize how much love and how much concern, and how much life experience comes into what she is saying to me and I wanted to write a song about it."