A Quote by Ananya Birla

I used to be locked up in my bedroom for hours, just listening to music, making some of my own, doodling and writing poetry. — © Ananya Birla
I used to be locked up in my bedroom for hours, just listening to music, making some of my own, doodling and writing poetry.
Dancing used to be my one and only thing and then I started getting into poetry and writing stories and then music just ended up taking over my life and it's been amazing.
Coming from my bedroom in San Antonio to this big world and going from singing covers off my laptop to making music in this nice studio, making professional-sounding music - it's just weird.
I was only listening to rock music, burning joss sticks in my bedroom, wanting only to be a disc jockey, and watching six hours of television a night - the worst kind of teenage alienation.
I'm just some irritating, lying, ginger kid from Cornwall who should have been locked up in some youth detention centre. I just managed to escape and blag it into music.
As a kid, I was always listening to music. I would just go in to my room and put on an album, read the lyrics, and just spend hours and hours in there. Plus, my sister Laurie played piano (in fact she taught me my first few notes) so music was always around one way or another.
On an average day, I spend 12 hours listening to music. Very little writing.
When I make music, it takes me two hours to get into the flow. To me it's like tapping into some kind of subconscious frequency: I just have to turn everything else off, open up part of myself, expose my fears and try to work through it in the music that I'm making.
If I'm not writing, I can download a newer album everybody's making a fuss about. But when I'm writing, I keep myself in my own zone - I worry about listening to new music that'll inform me too much. I'm the kind of person who goes to another country and starts speaking in an accent after three days.
Most people learn to improvise on their own, listening to records, endless hours of noodling on their instrument in the bedroom with all their spare time. That's traditionally how people learn.
But I feel like I developed my own love for hip-hop and rap music by myself. Just growing up and hearing new things. As you grow up, you begin to listen to new music that this kid is listening to, then you begin to like your own music, and start discovering it yourself.
I find that jazz loosens up the deep place of my mind, lets me find my own strange rhythms. Generally, I find the knottier the jazz, the better. Anything with singing is a distraction. Listening to classical music tends to have the unconscious effect of making my writing too smooth.
Music is very, very important in my movies. In some ways the most important stage, whether it ends up being in the movie or not, is just when I come up with the idea itself before I have actually sat down and started writing. I go into my record room... I have a big vinyl collection and I have a room kind of set up like a used record store and I just dive into my music, whether it be rock music, or lyric music, or my soundtrack collection. What I'm looking for is the spirit of the movie, the beat that the movie will play with.
My general approach to making art making hasn't changed much since I was 20, poor, and writing songs in my bedroom wanting to get my art out of my body into the world in some way.
When I'm in writing mode I tend not to listen to music. I usually have a gestation period before I start writing. When I'm listening, it usually happens on the road. So, we'd been listening to a lot of music on tour the year before and all that stuff sank in.
It was a natural thing for me to go become a musician, and then to start writing music. I don't even really remember making a decision to go into music, it was just there for me, always. If I weren't making a living at it, I'd still be writing music.
When I was 18 or 19, I realized that everything I was doing was connected to music - writing, doing videos, making my clothes. It all centered around being an artist. So I released a mixtape that I made in my bedroom, and it ended up getting a lot more attention than I expected.
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!