A Quote by Dave Matthews
I think making things that aren't necessarily shiny, happy feelings, putting them in that environment is sometimes an easy way to deal with the ugliness. Like, I know that as a kid, that I found - I think I learned this a bit from my mother - that if I could be as warm around strangers, no matter how strange or what different environment I was in, that people tended to be warm back.
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But I think it’s important to discuss just how easy it is for any of us to get caught up in things that might seem unthinkable—to get sucked into the wrong environment and make moral compromises that can tarnish us terribly. We like to think that we change our environment, but the truth is that it changes us. So we have to be extraordinarily careful to choose the right environment—to work with, and even socialize with, the right people. Ideally, we should stick close to people who are better than us so that we can become more like them.
If you want someone to feel warm, you dress them in a warm color and put a warm light on them and you get the picture. Sometimes, all that needs pushing a little bit to help tell the story.
I think that people like the idea that fans are sort of slightly eccentric and strange, but generally I've just found them very creative and warm and cheerful.
I saw a lot of bad things happen by people I know and to people I know. There were a lot of different gangs around and sometimes you found yourself in conflict. I found myself attracting negative things because I was in a negative environment, I was pre-determining this stuff before it happened.
Oh, my dear, if you only knew how strange is the matter regarding which I am here, it is you who would laugh. I have learned not to think little of any one's belief, no matter how strange it may be. I have tried to keep an open mind, and it is not the ordinary things of life that could close it, but the strange things, the extraordinary things, the things that make one doubt if they be mad or sane.
Some things are just for private. It's like people thinking I'm cold or this or that. It's unfortunate, but I don't need strangers to know that I'm warm. I don't need strangers to know the real me.
There are different 'It' factors for different players. There are all kinds of different personalities of quarterbacks around the league, but there are a lot of good ones and they don't necessarily think and act alike. But I do think there are moments during games even on the collegiate level where you can see that this guys is something different, someone sees things differently, they see things a little bit quicker, they're a little bit more cognizant of what's going on. I think it's something like that.
So yeah, how do I think of my environment and what happens with sound art? I love to play with the idea of elusive and intangible things. That could be psychological. It could be perceptual. It could be just the way your ears help you just navigate around.
Image and music always works together for me. I think they're equally important and I've always done things in a way that people remember them by, but I don't set out to just shock people...because that's very easy, a lot of people could do that, I just like to do things the way that makes me happy really. And sometimes that's too much for certain people, but, you know, I try to push the envelope to make the boundaries wider as far as what you can and can't do in music.
Granted, everybody is different, but I think it's real important to know all the people that you are around, and how they operate their history, and things like that. You know where they are coming from a little bit, and you don't insult them, or take something for granted.
I think, one thing that I've really come to appreciate about my parents as I've got older is you know, how wise they really were. As a kid when I was growing up, as any kid, you think you know every thing and I was no different to that. I had different opinions on a lot of different things then them but the way they raised me, in hindsight, they were right.
To congratulate oneself on one's warm commitment to the environment, or to peace, or to the oppressed, and think no more is a profound moral fault.
People say if you keep making work and keep putting it out, better things will come. I think artists should never forget that. I think that's what you have to be committed to if you're an artist, that's where the good feelings come from. It's so easy to get caught up in other stuff, like the business part of it. If you just have to be aware, just keep putting it out there.
I was a different kind of player as a kid and didn't do too much shouting and screaming. If things didn't go my way, I tended to get a bit overwhelmed. All I wanted to do was cry on my mom's shoulder. I didn't know how to handle defeat in front of a crowd, and I didn't want to be the loser.
I just think giving back is in tandem with the way in which I was raised, with the, 'It takes a village to raise a child' mentality. Sometimes with the knowledge you have, you just don't know how powerful it is. I think I'm in a reasonably interesting position to recognise that. Plus we're now living in a completely different time to the one in which I grew up in. Because of my peers as well, it's the whole reason I'm doing what I'm doing. In terms of putting things back into the community, it's almost like running my sound system again.
I think that we Americans, in particular, tend to think too directly about problems. If there's a problem we want to basically go in with a screwdriver or else drop bombs on it. A better way to solve problems is to think indirectly and try to change the environment. So I think you can gain much better self-control not so much by working on yourself as by looking at the situations you're in and the people you hang around, and changing your environment.
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