A Quote by Ben Gibbard

There's a cinematic quality that happens in my mind when I hear something that really lands. An album is just a journal of a life moving through time. — © Ben Gibbard
There's a cinematic quality that happens in my mind when I hear something that really lands. An album is just a journal of a life moving through time.
It's not really a conscious decision to do a quiet album or a noisier album. It's just something that happens, I guess.
Some people skip through life. Others are dragged through it. I sometimes wonder if we are moving through time, or whether time is moving through us. Light, unlike anything else in the universe is not effected by time. Light exists outside of time.. It is still a mystery to physicists.
Your subconscious mind is trying to help you all the time. That's why I keep a journal - not for chatter but for mostly the images that flow into the mind or little ideas. I keep a running journal, and I have all of my life, so it's like your gold mine when you start writing.
When you're home or you're working, your mind just isn't allowed to just roll on like it does when you're watching the scenery go by. You're hurdling through space but you're not really moving. ...It's that dreaminess, that ability to just get dreamy while you're looking out the window and you see something...and it makes you think of something else, and all of a sudden the words are just flowing out of you.
You want to have a song that people will listen to and go, 'Oh, yeah! That reminds me of something in my life,' or, 'something I'm currently going through,' or maybe something happens later and you hear the song and go, 'Wow! That really was telling a story that I can relate to now.' That's my hope.
There is something that might be called cinematic beauty. It can only be expressed in a film, and it must be present for that film to be a moving work. When it is very well expressed, one experiences a particularly deep emotion while watching that film. I believe that it is this quality that draws people to come and see a film, and that it is the hope of attaining this quality that inspires the filmmaker to make his film in the first place.
Most people don't take some things into consideration. When they hear an album, they hear the artist or they hear the lyric or they hear the melody. But they don't really think about the environment in which it was recorded, which is so important. It's that thing that determines what the album sounds like.
I keep moving through time and time keeps moving through me. And through that process, life takes shape. The question is what shape it is. I'm not the first person to ask that question, or to see how absurd it is to think there's a real answer. Maybe life's a circle.
To me, every episode is like a song, and every season is like an album. There's that part of the day when you first get the idea and you say, "This could be really funny." And you sit down and you write it. There's just something that happens there that doesn't happen when you really give it a lot of time beforehand.
I guess there's this mind shift that happens once you're on stage. I don't know, chemicals, something happens and you just... I just become completely in control of where I am. And it's all about trusting the people that you're on the stage with, listening... and it just falls into place really easily.
If you create something, it really should mean something more than that to you. I had to grow into all of this though, through a learning process. I didn't wake up one day and just say, 'Yeah, that's Jlin, there it is'. That's why I said it took my entire life to make this album and it comes back to having that comfort zone - if you don't have one, the more progress you make and the more creative you become over time.
A really wise man is feminine, receptive, passive. That's why Buddha looks so feminine. That quality of passiveness, that quality of receptivity... He is just a receptacle. He reflects life: he allows life to reflect in him, to be reflected through him. He sings the song that existence wants to sing through him. He has no ideas of his own; he does not hinder.
I really just sat down to write. I mean, I did what most writers do when something happens that's overwhelming, fascinating, moving, all of that.
When you come across something, and its quality is just outrageous, that's probably something of value. It's been that way for hundreds and hundreds of years - the really, really expensive stuff is also really, really high quality.
But when you hear the complete album, it gets dark, really straight-up rock, with some really intimate moments with just me and the piano. It's not completely me because there are parts of me that aren't on that song, that are on the album.
This record for the first time - feels like a record that really represents my whole entire life and instead of just a period of my life. And it is really kind of eye opening and it makes me feel really good to hear this record and hear all the years.
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!