I'm a folk preacher. A folk therapist. A folk musician. I come from authentically that which is of my experience. Therefore, the music is strictly from the soul, strictly improvisational.
Cecil WilliamsI don't go and study other folks. I come from where I came from, as a kid, in the little black church I grew up in. And some of the things they did I rejected, because I could see that it was a manipulation and an exaggeration. My struggle is never to fool folks; to keep it authentic - who we are and who we are becoming - rather than to mimic or to translate what others do into my own terms.
Cecil WilliamsI'm not interested in being an intellectual or in being traditional, conventional. I'm not interested in having great wisdom. I'm not interested in those facets of the evangelical movement. I don't have to get stuff from them. I got my own stuff. If it hits you, okay. That's why I've got so many different races, classes, and such a mixture of theologies and philosophies. I've got agnostics, atheists, Buddhists, Christians, Jews, Muslims the whole spectrum.
Cecil WilliamsDeath is a reality, but life is a reality also. You got to live at this time in your life like you've never lived before. And therefore you've got to find those values in your life that fulfill what you need to do. Now, what is it you need to do?
Cecil WilliamsWhen the musician starts improvising, he never can go back to what he did last Sunday. That's what's frightening to a lot of people who can't let themselves go. But it's also very invigorating and very releasing because it opens you up to be yourself.
Cecil WilliamsThere's great poetry in the Old Testament and the New Testament. And I'm not interested in trying to prove whether this paragraph is as it was or as it should have been or should not be. My pursuit is to find the truth for me in those stories and make them apropos. The important thing is that people wrote them. These were inspirational stories, and you got to see them that way. If you don't, you'll get in trouble. So I'm not going to spend a lot of time trying to find out whether or not Mary was a virgin. What do I care about Mary being a virgin?
Cecil Williams