A Quote by Art Alexakis

I have my dark side like anybody, you know, depression, anxiety... and I write about gritty, real-life stuff. — © Art Alexakis
I have my dark side like anybody, you know, depression, anxiety... and I write about gritty, real-life stuff.
Look, I like gritty. I write gritty. There is a time and a place for gritty. I'll take my Batman gritty, thank you, and I will acknowledge that such a portrayal means that my 11-year-old has to wait before he sees The Dark Knight. But if Hollywood turns out a Superman movie that I can't take him to? They've done something wrong.
I use the music to vent, and a lot of the stuff that I am writing about or was writing about contained a lot of anger and anxiety, stress and depression, so that's how the album came out so dark.
People think once you get famous and rich you move out of the public sphere and you have nothing left to write about. I've heard that - Bruce Springsteen was this real street boy, now he's got this big house. How does that compute? If you don't look at the material side of someone's life, if you look at more the emotional side, there's always a wealth of stuff to write about.
I like showing the gritty truthful dark side of humanity.
I wanted to work with somebody who seemed like he came from the same place that I did, which is that total immersion and learning about the world around, from this very gritty, dark side, and had access to that.
Real relationship is gritty and earthy, the stuff that life is made of.
The hardest thing to write was explaining what anxiety feels like. Every time I'd try to really write about what it feels like to have an anxiety attack, I would actually have an anxiety attack. It was good material but so incredibly uncomfortable.
The great thing about Showtime is that they really give us leeway and the range to explore the real dark side of stuff.
I think that I write about stuff that others don't write about. I don't have a bunch of love songs cuz I don't really have much boy experience. I just write about what I am actually going through in my real life.
I don't know why I write. The honest answer is that I don't have an answer. I wouldn't die if I couldn't write fiction. Actually keel over and die - it's unlikely. But quite quickly writing has come to feel like the only thing I really know how to do. And I go a bit stir crazy if I don't write more or less every day. But that makes writing sound like a mood-regulator, a way to regulate anxiety or depression, and it doesn't really come down to that.
I've battled mental health problems - first, anxiety, and later the depression that anxiety can trigger - on and off for about half my life. Which I don't think is breaking news to anyone: it's something I've been honest about, both privately and publicly, as much as I can.
The book was just something that came along after we played the Super Bowl and I wrote a little essay that went online. Then I had two or three weeks and I said, wow, that essay was pretty good. Maybe I'll try and write some other stuff. Writing about the depression, I just felt - you know, when you write a book like this, you have to open up your life. You have to be willing to do so to a certain degree.
I'd like to start writing scripts. I think I'd probably be inclined to write a very dark comedy or a tragic romance. As a kid, I used to write really dark stuff.
I had bad anxiety and bad depression. That's like the worst thing you could have. You think too much about the past, you get depression. You think too much about the future, you get anxiety.
When I write a story, I just wanna tell you what's in my head. It can come from real life and then turn into fantasy, stuff just rhyming. And write about what you know. I just like to tell stories that have not been told or [told] from my perspective.
I'm self-deprecating, but I'm an artist, too. I have to write new songs to chronicle stuff for myself. I write a song like 'Middle Age' or 'Responsibility' or 'I Just Work Here,' and it's about how bleak life can be. But it's real.
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