Reflections from Rosalie

Rosalie on being an artist:
I’m an actress. I’m a troubadour. I take the news from place to place. I do it with music. I do it with poetry and stories and I try to connect. I think we need to be connected and that’s my mission. That’s what I think I am; I’m a connector.

I have people who ask me, “Are you really sad because you aren’t successful”? “What do you mean I’m not successful? I do what I like to do. I make a living doing it, if you can call it a living. I have made that my life. I have the respect and the friendship of my peers. I live in a house my father made with his hands. I have a damn good life. What do you mean I’m not successful?”

Rosalie on her performances:
...connecting to my audience is the most important thing to me… I think everything has to be connected; the people you work with and the people you work to. Theater is a living thing and to me it’s way more than just coming out and prancing around and having a character that you assume… I want to break the “4th Wall,” which is a theatrical thing.

I’ve always wanted to be that – whoever I’m seeing or whoever I’m being, whatever I’m doing. I like the idea of breaking down barriers, breaking down walls.

First you make them want to listen and then if they want to, the quieter you get, the more intense that feeling is.

It’s lovely to be very quiet. There’s an intimacy in that that you can’t achieve if you’re shouting and yelling and singing, which I like to do, too. I love it when I can sail notes out there and make them feel it.

You connect with a whole room full of people you never even saw before in your life, and you just feel like you want to pack them all up and take them every wherewith you.

Every human being wants to communicate, and if you are able to do it that way, that’s an incredibly blessed thing to have in your life, to feel comfortable with letting go of all the things that make you hold back your real feelings.

Everybody has hard things happening to them. They don’t talk about them. I think the reason I talk about them and sing about them is because I see that it is helpful to people. And I want very much to help people. That’s very important to me. I try very hard to find the way to tell those stories so they relate to everyone.

It’s almost like getting outside of yourself, getting outside of yourself and then watching yourself do it. It’s really hard to describe but when I feel like I’m completely free, I’m outside of myself.

I use music from all kinds of disciplines and I’m not always the same. You could see me a lot of times and still not know exactly what I do because I’m going to do something different if I get a chance.

I’m a storyteller and I use music to tell the stories… I was raised by a very literate family. In fact my mother taught me that you can go anywhere in your mind…

Sometimes I sing places where they don’t want me to tell stories and I almost can’t do that. I can sing a bunch of songs but they don’t make any sense to me if you don’t have the stories. They don’t connect. They don’t have a context if you just sing them.

I hope they don’t just think of one song. I hope they get a whole piece. I think it’s a story. I think it has a beginning and a middle and an end and I hope they remember everything.

I think folk music is music that you make because you need it, not because you’re going to sell it or because you’re going to perform it. You make it because you need it.

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Rosalie Sorrels: Way Out in Idaho is a production of Idaho Public Television.

© 2007 Idaho Public Television. All Rights Reserved. Published May 1, 2007

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