I have never sought out Shakira's music--I've only heard bits and pieces on commercials--but after reading this article about her in the NY Times, I feel compelled to. I'm not crazy about her hesitancy to be labeled a feminist, but she seems like a very cool person, and we share a lot of thoughts about the embodied creative process:

--"I think art, music should be sensual," she added. "Not necessarily sexual. I think that's a huge difference between that N and that X. It's more than the 11 letters of difference. Sensual is everything that refers to the delight of the senses. And that's what artists do, is stimulate the senses in any possible way. I don't think I have to hang myself a little sign that says 'Hey, I'm sexy,' and then take it off and now say, 'Hey, now I'm serious.' I can just fluctuate and oscillate from one side to the other whenever my instincts tell me to."

--And she was still working on "Oral Fixation, Vol. 2" after its single, "Don't Bother," had been released. She was under deadline pressure by that point but, she says, "You can't ripen a fruit by hitting it with rocks."

--"Sometimes a melody suggests in what language that song should be written," she said. "I just learned to listen to what the song wants to tell me."

--Rehearsal beckoned; in a few days, Shakira would be singing the songs in public for the first time. "Just today," she said, "I'm starting to get in touch with the songs from the performer point of view. O.K., how am I going to interpret this with my body? How am I going to start to have now a physical relationship with my songs?"

--"My hips tell me where and when I should move," she had said before returning to work with the band. "And my hips don't lie - my hips tell me the truth."