Q: Hi, you’ve just shared an interview of Andrew Lloyd Webber. What is your purpose?
A: Do I always need to explain all my activities? I like it so I share it, that’s it. Happy if some of my friends find it interesting, otherwise I’m happy the same.
Q: Can you tell me what he inspires you to do?
A: To grow an apple tree.
Q: Really? Is it the only one?
A: Don’t be so surprised. It’s much more than that, honestly, like many other inspirers do to me.
Q: He doesn’t have golden rules in songwriting. Do you have some?
A: Neither do I. If many people learn the rules and follow the rules, for Picasso “learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist”, I haven’t done that but always tried to discover the rules by myself.
Q: Are they your own rules? Do you think you’re too proud to say that?
A: I simply tell you what I think. What more do you want from me? They seem to fit me the most. The journey to discover the rules will never end but is always interesting.
Q: Does that mean you have never learned?
A: Totally wrong. I’ve learned everyday. The truth is, I haven’t attended any academic class but proactively chosen cases, lessons and people to learn.
Q: Do you think you are a stubborn woman who doesn’t want to open her mind to perceive professional knowledge?
A: A very very important criterion of a mentor or teacher, for me, is the ability to inspire, but I haven’t found someone in person in this sector to realize it. I have tried, but it was such a tough challenge for my patience that I quit from the beginning.
Q: What are the difficulties that you have to face in songwriting?
A: Rhythm has always been the last part of a song that I finish. Clock is an obsession to me, it was an enemy that disturbed my sleep since I was a child. I couldn’t stand its monotonous, regular sound and sometimes I asked myself whether it’s the reason why I’m very bad at rhythm, then turned on a tutorial video and… continued to get stuck there. Strangely, my mind acts like clock needles that jumps from music to painting, then reading to singing and so on, through different periods… but it always goes round a fix point in the center that’s called LOVE.
Q: Are they all the jobs around which you have turned?
A: Not really. I haven’t mentioned the other ones just because they’re not my favorite activities.
Q: Andrew Lloyd Webber advised “get your works performed, it doesn’t matter where or when or how and in time they will be noticed”.
A: I’m slightly desperate about Vietnamese music panorama and I have procrastinated for years. I’m a perfectionist and I still haven’t found suitable partners. Maybe it’s because of my laziness to get to know it, maybe because I set the standard too high, maybe because I lack in self-confidence. Hopefully there’ll be a Hollywood-ending, in which I can use the verb form “I had never thought I would… but… and…”
Q: Wow, you’re so patient, in this aspect.
A: What else can I do? Would someone give me an advice? I promise to admire him to the moon and back. Anyway, while the world is going round itself and the sun and a supermassive black hole has just been captured for the first time, I’ll continue to learn (or to feel – to be precise), to improve and to write.
Q: What is your songwriting process?
A: The sources of inspiration for my songs are various. I haven’t written hundreds of songs but every of them has its own story. They’re conceived and developed from an emotion, a sensation, a muse, a keyword, a masterpiece…
Q: What is one of your weaknesses, for not having attended any academic course?
A: Enormous one, indeed: marvelous performances with fabulous singers and amazing orchestra keep exciting your imagination, but if you’re not able to share your ideas concretely, your creative children will always be in your secret garden, no matter how beautiful it is, how passionately it scents.
Q: Do you think you are lucky?
A: In music? Well, let’s say “yes”. “Yes” to everybody who loves music and has chance to enjoy music tranquilly, not only me. Music is a cure, a therapy. I won’t say “I’m incredibly lucky” or “I’m terribly unlucky” or something in between, but to have a background like him is blissful. Sometimes, just a few times, I wished someone in my family would appreciate this sector. It’s so simple and totally possible, isn’t it?
Q: I would love to hear more about this point.
A: I’m somehow lucky like him, because I’m interested in many aspects of life like art, architecture, choreography… that live in harmony together. You can see each of them from the perspectives of the other ones, for example melodic patterns as ranges of mountains, ebbs and flows of ocean waves, grace movements of a ballerina, to feel musical notes in a painting and vice versa…
Q: Why are you writing this post in English, not in your mother tongue?
A: Firstly, it’s a kind of filter, only few people who care would read my English, for me quantity is secondary; secondly, it’s a habit. I don’t always tend to make something eye-catching or ear-catching but sense-catching (I don’t know if this compound word exists). I’m not good at definition.
Q: Don’t you also mean that you can’t define yourself?
A: I’m simply someone in the middle of nowhere.
Q: What are your secrets of creativity?
A: My most important one is a good sleep. Sleeplessness makes me tired mentally and physically that also confines my creativity. And all I need for now is truly a sleep. Talk to you later!
Q: Hey… Is it bedtime now?… Oops…