Freedom is a Feeling | Nina Simone / Interview with Peter Rodis, 1968

Nina Simone Newport Jazz Festival in 1968

Nina Simone, Newport Jazz Festival, 1968

“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 them.
But you know it when it happens. That’s what I mean by free.
I’ve had a couple 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 something to really, really feel.
Like a new way of seeing.
Like a new way of seeing something.”