A Quote by Harrison Birtwistle

One thing I've tried to do in writing music is take on very basic things, very archetypal things. — © Harrison Birtwistle
One thing I've tried to do in writing music is take on very basic things, very archetypal things.
As a woman, for example, I live and work very much like a man. I take a lot of things from the man's world and I have to do that if I want to survive modern life. Conversely, men have to take things from the woman's world to survive. It's a very beautiful thing that you have to mold your own gender nowadays. But it's a very stressful thing for us.
My mother was always expanding my art skills and getting me to paint different things. You always got to push some. And, I mean, I learned basic things like getting up on time, how to shop - you know, you don't touch things in a store you're not going to buy. These things were taught very young. I don't see today enough of this basic, you know, basic skill teaching.
Life as an astronaut in space is a very interesting one. There are things we all take for granted here on earth, like gravity, that can make things a bit challenging. One of the fun things about getting here is the zero gravity and floating around. But it also makes things very difficult.
My head is full of songs I'm writing now, and things I am thinking now. I'm not very good at drawing on things that have happened, things I think might happen, or things I want to happen. I'm very much in right now.
When I started in the business there were no women in executive positions, no women producers or directors and certainly no camerawomen and we were destined to do very archetypal roles, very cliched things, so I was a dizzy blonde for years.
I believe that one of the things I've tried to do is work hard and take the business very seriously.
I try to be as optimistic as I can. I feel like that's the beautiful thing about art and music. It can take you places, and they can be a positive influence. A very soothing influence. Honestly, I feel like there's enough pain and terrible things that happen in life. That's beautiful thing in art, you can really idealize things.
The one thing I do believe is, if you make the songs about the human aspects of things, you've got a much better chance of having the music transcend the times. If you make them very political and very topical, it's going to date very quickly.
Like most kids growing up, I had a very wide interest. I was interested in everything. I tried to take advantage of everything, from the sciences to music to writing to literature.
I have tried... believe me, I have tried to like rap music. It makes me feel so very, very old. I have tried to get home with the downies.
I had a very normal, very typical American childhood. My father worked for the government at the Pentagon and my mother was an educator, so we had a very average upbringing, but that's helped me in my writing because I'm writing about ordinary things.
I tried to start looking at things differently; I tried to surround myself with positive energy. Meditation helped, exercising, writing, reading and learning new things.
I've had lots of people saying very nice things about the work. But I genuinely feel in the course of a writing career you're going to have people say very nice things and some not-so-nice things, and if at all possible you should try to ignore both.
I think that the tendency for most people is to fall back on a comic interpretation of things because things are so sad, so terrible. If you didn't laugh you'd kill yourself. But the truth of the matter is that existence in general is very very tragic, very very sad, very brutal and very unhappy.
I love writing about things I know, and I like to be very honest in my music.
One thing that was very important to me was that I felt comfortable in the lab from being very, very small. I knew that that's where I belonged, and I could fix things and move things. And no matter how many classrooms I went into where I was the only girl in the physics class or whatever, I never questioned the fact that I didn't belong there.
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