A Quote by Leonard Cohen
People used to say my music was too difficult or too obscure, and I never set out to be difficult or obscure. I just set out to write what I felt as honestly as I could, and I am delighted when other people feel a part of themselves in the music.
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My music can be a little obscure. It does worry me that the music might be too complicated for people to take in - that they have to work too hard at it.
Be wary of passing the judgment: obscure. To find something obscure poses no difficult, elephants and poodles find many things obscure.
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.
When I was growing up, I was the most pretentious person I have ever met. I only read obscure books and watched obscure movies and only listened to obscure music.
I do feel like I have set out a path of my life to never again be too small or too weak to protect the people I love.
Meeting people is difficult, period. LA is a difficult place to meet people anyway, and Hollywood is such a small community. But I don't make it a rule just to date other actors and people in the entertainment industry. It could work out with me and a dentist. It could work out with me and a lawyer.
I think there's just been this "thing" that's developed, this way that we have of talking about our music that alienates people. And I fall into that too! I learned that in graduate school. You just talk about your music in a specific way, and that separates people from you. But some composers like that. Schoenberg liked that. He wanted to feel that he was making music for an elite few. That's fine for him, but I want to set myself free from that sort of attitude.
That's because we did not set out to make black music. We set out to make quality music that everyone could enjoy and listen to.
Music means communication to me. I say 'listen you people out there, listen to my music, let's be one.' Music is a friend to me when I am lonely, when I am blue. You can't define music 'cause music is cosmos and it knows no barrier or definition. You have to feel music to dig it.
I used to hang out with Salvador Dali a lot. He was such a nice man. I really liked his wife Gala, too. People say that she was tricky, but she was never difficult with me.
I think all of us set out to try and reach as many people. That's the whole point of being in a band: trying to get your music out there. So, any opportunity to do that, within reason. We're informed about where our music is going to be used; we get to say yes or no. There are things we can turn down, and there are things we can agree to. When it comes to movies and stuff like that, it's great for us. I don't think it's selling out. Maybe 10 or 20 years ago it was seen as selling out, but nowadays I think it's the only way to get your music out there.
The Big Music Project gives young people access to producers, managers, set designers, artists and a load of other industry insiders who are at top of their game. It can be difficult to know where to start and this project gives young people who are passionate about music, knowledge and hands on experience.
I used to go to the Church of the Harvest, right off Adams and La Brea. There was a pastor there who had the best big choir and the best band. He would start praying, and the music would start playing and just make people feel so good, you could break out of whatever you were going through. Soft music can have that effect, too.
When I was setting out to be an artist, I said: If I can just produce one work that some people think is good, if I can become an obscure cult artist, that's all I want. Well, I attained that. I'm an obscure cult artist, and I think now, Why didn't I say I want to be another Picasso or something? What other options were open to me? But I was convinced I couldn't achieve great things because I don't have a steady-state mind.
We're just nerds that play music. Because we get played on the radio and have a Vitaminwater ad with Aaron Paul dancing on a treadmill, people are going to say we sold out. I don't write music for that. I write music for me.
We inhabit an obscure planet, in an obscure galaxy, around an obscure sun, but on the other hand, modern human society represents one of the most complex things we know.
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