Creativity Quote by Cassandra Wilson

Cassandra Wilson is admitting that the real instrument she’s playing isn’t just voice or phrasing, but narrative. Jazz singers often get boxed into the idea of “interpretation” as tasteful delivery. Wilson flips that: even when the lyrics aren’t hers, she’s not merely honoring a text, she’s building a backstory for it, casting herself inside it, deciding what happened five minutes before the first line and what emotional bruise the last note is covering up.

The phrase “even the ones I haven’t written” quietly rejects the notion that authorship confers authority. In Wilson’s world, a standard isn’t a museum piece; it’s a script that begs for a new actor. That’s why “playacting” lands with bite. It can sound like fakery, but she uses it as a craft term: performance as deliberate make-believe, not confessional oversharing. She’s telling you that authenticity isn’t a raw diary entry; it’s the credibility of a character inhabited with full sensory detail.

There’s also a protective intelligence here. By foregrounding “imagining,” she keeps sentimentality at arm’s length. The emotion is real, but it’s routed through invention, which is how Wilson gets that spacious, cinematic quality in her interpretations - blues, folk, jazz standards - where the song feels like a scene with weather, lighting, and history. The intent is invitation: listen like you’re watching a story unfold, not consuming a “cover.”