Top 100 Quotes & Sayings by Phil Elverum - Page 2

I want to not be associated with death or cancer, I don't want that life.

I do like playing music with other people.

There are parts on 'Wind's Poem' that are literal recordings of wind. I had this old sound effects record that I got some wind from and then I figured out that distorted cymbals sound just like wind so I used that a lot.

It's a beautiful idea to focus on how everything is temporary and always in flux. It may feel bad now, but it will feel good later, and vice versa. To write about those things brings this satisfying feeling as a creative person.

A weird side effect of being in close proximity to death is an urgency.

I don't really see myself in a lineage which is fine with me. Sometimes I do try to explicitly copy an exact song, an arrangement, a sound - and I fail. And so you can't even tell I was trying to do that thing. It makes sense in my own head but I'm incapable of copying.

I remember discovering that I loved recording - that breakthrough when I was in high school getting to record for the first time.

I think I'm obsessed with accessibility which is why, when I'm touring, I want to play all ages shows.

It's really hard just making dinner as a single parent, but I'm figuring it out. I just have to be more focused and efficient with my little scraps of time that I do have.

I am so thirsty to do my projects whenever I have a spare moment.

It even feels absurd to be writing or singing a song at all - in the context of actual death, being alive feels absurd.

I don't get to make many choices in my life as a single parent.

The universe is chaotic and meaningless, and it's good to laugh about it. That's my stance on life, actually. Some people go through life grinding their teeth, suffering and banging their head against the wall. I'm glad that's not the reaction that occurs in me.

I've sort of accidentally put myself in this position where I opened up the story of my life, and of course people want to reciprocate and open up to me. I'm OK at it, I don't make people feel worse, but it's strange to find myself in this role, all of a sudden, that I never would have pursued.

They're all true - the cliches like 'one day at time' and 'ups and downs.'

Every tour is different. Sometimes I'll get a band together and sometimes it's just me.

We had a simple 8-track studio set up in the record store where I worked. And just staying after work and experimenting, realizing what was possible with recording - that's why my project was called The Microphones at first. Because it wasn't even songs really. It was just sound.

My exposure to independent music was via Nirvana and grunge so I'd never gotten into punk. I don't really like that music of Crass, but I love the band, and I love their way, and their presentation.

I don't want to return to places and sing the same songs a second time.

My grandpa is the funniest person in the world, straight up. But mostly everyone in my family groans when he is 'on.' I am his biggest fan.

I am commodifying my grief, to put it really bluntly. I accept it. And I try not to think about it.

I reach out. I ask for help. I tell my story.

Nirvana was happening when I was 14, kind of the perfect age. Growing up in Anacortes, Washington, it was close enough to Seattle that it seemed like a local thing.

People used to assume I was a serious/sad person because of my music for some reason.

Usually I work at the merch table until one minute before I have to go on stage.

Being a musician means I am 'hanging out' a lot, like driving on tour or being at a show or whatever, so maybe there's more time to interact with peers and develop jokes.

I am drawn to cold, desolate places rather than Hawaii. I actually love Hawaii too, but I tend to go to Iceland or Norway or Northern Japan - northern places for whatever reason. Which aren't necessarily the best places to tour.

Nirvana really touched me as a teenager and started making me pay attention to music as a participatory thing that I could do.

It is something I've noticed - that my audiences are young. My only thought has been because I play all-ages shows. Even so, they're pretty young, and sometimes I'm nervous the content of my songs - these weird, ambiguous, philosophical ideas I'm trying to articulate. Are the kids getting it? Is it going over their heads?

I just play under the name Mt. Eerie. I started doing that in 2003 and I've pretty much been doing that since then.

I listen to all kinds of music and sometimes I try to do something that's referential to an era or a genre, but it still sounds like me.

I have a hard time working with other people with my own songs because I have a pretty complete idea of how it should be. It's usually just me multi-tracking which is better than coercing someone into doing my idea.

It's easy to get swept up in the day to day ridiculous things that are in the news. They're not meaningless, they're legitimate and worth being engaged with. But it's easy to get overwhelmed and swept up and forget what real life feels like.

I just can't turn off the part me that asks that question over and over.

There's a lot of music out there that's like, 'I'm so mad! I'm sad! I'm into skulls and crossbones and the color black,' and that's just meaningless and shallow. So much of metal is about that and it's hard to find metal that is substantial and meaningful in terms of its content.

These people that worked with my dad doing landscaping were in a grunge band so the music on the cover of Rolling Stone was in a very real way connected to people practicing in the woods near my house while I was home doing my homework.

Comedy is deep and wild and I am excited about the mysteries within.

Grief - the actual, natural process of it - doesn't have a schedule that I can work my life around.

I'm really nervous about coming off as exclusive or elitist. At the same time, I recognize that when I put out vinyl or an expensive coffee table book not everyone can afford it or listen to it.

For awhile the only thing people were talking to me about my music, that's all they ever said: 'You must be a nature lover. Are you camping all the time?'