9 Loreena McKennitt Quotes on Music

Loreena McKennitt quotes on music

1. To be a catalyst is one of my life's objectives. I've been inspired by many people who in turn have been catalysts. It's very interesting to see the waves of interest come and go in Celtic territory. If I can be a catalyst for other people, that's wonderful.

3. I have come to use the pan-Celtic history, which spans from 500 BC to the present, as a creative springboard. The music I am creating is a result of traveling down that road and picking up all manner of themes and influences, which may or may not be overtly Celtic in nature.

5. Bonfires dot the rolling hillsides Figures dance around and around To drums that pulse out echoes of darkness And moving to the pagan sound.

7. The thundering waves are calling me home to you The pounding sea is calling me home to you

9. As we cast our gaze on the tumbling sea A vision came o'er me Of thundering hooves and beating wings In clouds above.

10. As you turned to go I heard you call my name, You were like a bird in a cage spreading its wings to fly 'The old ways are lost,' you sang as you flew And I wondered why.

19. There is a wonderful old Chinese proverb that I love, 'A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving'. I think about my personal approach to musical projects much like a travel writer might approach the preparation for a book. You latch on to a certain theme or historical event and follow that into the unknown, while, at the same time, expanding on those themes.

20. Until the early nineties, I was under the impression that the Celts were this mad collection of anarchists from Ireland, Scotland and Wales. When I saw an exhibition in Venice, I discovered they were a vast collection of tribes originating from Middle and Eastern Europe as far back as 50O BC, and that over the centuries they migrated and integrated with people all over the world. So I've used this cultural history as a creative muse. With The Book Of Secrets in particular, I was interested in beginning with their earlier and more Eastern history

21. One of the most wonderful and engaging things I've learned is that we are the culmination and extension of each other's histories and there is more that binds us together than separates us, and in discovering this, perhaps our needs are timeless and universal. I have a very deep interest in religion and spirituality. I like the Sufi perspective, which suggests that it is better to participate in the world than to become detached from the world.