Nina Simone On Having No Fear

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Transcription:

Everybody is half dead. Everybody avoids everybody. All over the place, in most situations, most all of the time. I know, I’m one of those everybodys. And to me, it is terrible. So all I’m trying to do all the time is just open people up so they feel themselves and let themselves be open to somebody else. That is all. That’s it.

I’ve always thought that I was shaking people up. But now I want to go at it more. And I want to go at it more deliberately. And I want to go at it coldly. I want to shake people up so bad that, when they leave a nightclub where I performed, I just want them to be to pieces.

I want to go in that den, of those elegant people with their old ideas, smugness, and just drive them insane. When I’m calm and cool and really got the antennae working, you know when to push and you know when to not. Nobody can tell you though. You have to feel it. In any situation between human beings. It’s what makes a groove.

What’s free to me? Same thing it is to you. You tell me. It’s just a feeling. It’s just a feeling. It’s like how do you tell somebody how it feels to be in love. How are you going to tell anybody who has not been in love how it feels to be in love? You cannot do it to save your life. You can describe things, but you can’t tell ’em. But you know it when it happens. That’s what I mean by free.

I’ve had a couple of times on stage when I really felt free. And that’s something else. That’s really something else. I’ll tell you what freedom is to me: no fear! I mean, really, no fear. If I could have that half of my life, no fear. Lots of children have no fear. That’s the only way I can describe it. That’s not all of it, but it is something to really feel…Like a new way of seeing. A new way of seeing something.