A Quote by Arca
I kind of roll my eyes when people say they make music for themselves or they make art just for themselves, because, maybe in their head, what that means is that they're making it for someone who they don't think is real. Their audience isn't real. But it's still a communicative act. It's still an outward manifestation of longing.
Related Quotes
Even if I'm doing a show and there's five people in the audience and the sound system is terrible - I mean, it's been a while but I've certainly done those kind of shows where it's just every conceivable thing is against you - you still have music. It's still something that's real whether there's five people in the audience or a hundred thousand people in the audience. And that's always been there for me.
People will always have the desire to make rock and roll records, and they'll always have the desire to sell rock and roll records. Most of the people making these records do it because it is a business, and if someone says, "You can't do this", they won't complain. They'll just keep making records, but they'll get blander and blander. There'll still be rock and roll, but compared to what it really could be or ought to be, I don't think it'll be all that terrific.
I just encourage everyone to make real music and it will fuel the engine and the machine. Just make it real and put your heart into it. Don't make it because you heard someone on the radio.
Artists make art for themselves. Art is an honest expression. Artists who pander to their fans by trying to make music "for" their fans make empty, transparent art. The true fan does not want you to make music for them, they want you to make music for you, because that's the whole reason they fell in love with you in the first place.
Sometimes I think that love is one big fairy tale. I wonder if people who say they are in love, if – really – they’ve just talked themselves into it. They want it so badly, they kind of make it happen. They fake it until they start believing their own story. Maybe that’s just sour grapes or something. Maybe because it doesn’t happen to me, I don’t want to think it happens to anyone else.
I think in London - and I don't wanna offend anybody in America, but this is a real statement - they still have the right approach to making music. In the U.S., people see it as a way to make money; they see it as a means to get out. It's a hustle, which is great - any way you can provide for your family that's legal is fantastic.
Human beings have a bunch of different dimensions, so even if you're playing someone who you think maybe the audience might not like, might not be going for, you still have to give them the dimensions to make them a real human, otherwise there's no point.
I think country music is popular - has been popular and will always be popular because I think a lot of real people singing about a lot of real stuff about real people. And it's simple enough for people to understand it. And we kind of roll with the punches.
From what I see, nowadays punk and anarchy are still connected with "fast loud music by smelly drunk chaos-people" and, yes, I know I'm over-generalizing here. So when the occasional venue still describes us The ex as "anarchopunk" that's a real bummer, since it attracts an audience that expects a kind of music - which we don't play - and it keeps away another audience that actually might have liked it when they would have come. That's a pity, for both them and us.
Can anything be more disgusting than to hear people called 'educated' making small jokes about eating ham, and showing themselves empty of any real knowledge as to the relation of their own social and religious life to the history of the people they think themselves witty in insulting? [...] The best thing that can be said of it is, that it is a sign of the intellectual narrowness—in plain English, the stupidity which is still the average mark of our culture.
I wanted to make sure the focus [in The Land] was on human beings themselves and their decisions, but still connected to the urban environment that people associate as being black. I think I was able to make a film without commenting on "black this or black that" and you still feel the presence of it. There's no one character who's saying "we're all black and we're all in this struggle." It's that you just feel it. Some of that is because we get the sense from a lot of independent films that black people struggle all the time.
I want to be known as someone who got caught trying. Yup. Trying to make communities that didn't think much of themselves see themselves as fabulous, powerful, beautiful, loving, kind, members of this world. That's what I want people to say about me.
I care more about the fans in general, just making sure they enjoy what I do. And then also I kind of had this kind of ideal of the kind of music I want to make and what I'm aiming for kind of creatively and just the quality of the music that I'm trying to make. And I have that in my head.
Which implies that the real issue in art is the audience's response. Now I claim that when I make things, I don't care about the audience's response, I'm making them for myself. But I'm making them for myself as audience, because I want to wake myself up.
I'm a real people pleaser, and for a while I was really desperate to make a kind of thing that would satisfy everyone, and I realized I was focusing so much on satisfying everyone else that I'd forgotten that the only real way to make anything true is to focus on making what you want to hear and saying what you want to say. Trying to people please with my art was a direct line to complete meltdown, writer's block situation, and I had to look inward before I could move past it.
The great art of writing is the art of making people real to themselves with words.
Related Authors
Ani DiFranco Quotes
American
Musician
Bob Dylan Quotes
American
Musician
Brian Eno Quotes
British
Musician
Bruce Springsteen Quotes
American
Musician
David Bowie Quotes
English
Musician
Drake Quotes
Canadian
Musician
Elton John Quotes
English
Musician
George Harrison Quotes
British
Musician
Henry Rollins Quotes
American
Musician
John Lennon Quotes
English
Musician
Madonna Ciccone Quotes
American
Musician
Moby Quotes
American
Musician
Nicki Minaj Quotes
American
Musician
Patti Smith Quotes
American
Musician
Thom Yorke Quotes
English
Musician
Tori Amos Quotes
American
Musician