I could never work in a recording studio where you have this lovely view and a beach and the waves are crashing. For me, it's all about being in a tiny room with little windows. It's almost like you have to be in a prison. And you can create beauty when you're in that sort of deprived environment, which is a re-creation of your formative years.
For me, it's all about being in a tiny room with little windows. It's almost like you have to be in a prison.
Think about it: it is easy to see God's beauty in a glorious sunset or in ocean waves crashing on a beach. But can you find the holiness in a struggle for life?
I function better in the jungle in Amazonia or Antarctica or Alaska or the Sahara desert. An artificial environment like a studio has never attracted me. I could work in a studio, but I would never really feel at home.
....he began to speak to me, not in the jocular way of visitors to the menagerie but rather as one speaks to the wind or to the waves crashing on a beach, uttering that which must be said but which must not be heard by anyone.
I never planned on being a live performer. My whole forte was about being in the studio, producing, playing the piano on recording sessions. I was all about the studio.
You can see how different artists work, from writing to recording, just from being in the studio environment with them.
It's elevating and humbling at the same time. Running along a beach at sunrise with no other footprints in the sand, you realize the vastness of creation, your own insignificant space in the plan, how tiny you really are, your own creatureliness and how much you owe to the supreme body, the God that brought all this beauty and harmony into being.
And sometimes, I'd be allowed to be hanging out in the studio, which I just loved kind of, like, being in the room with these big recording desks, with all these, like, buttons and knobs and watching the guys use them.
I like being in warm weather. I find that relaxes me. I like being near water. I like sitting on a beach and sort of hearing the water, watching waves break, looking at the shimmering. I find that really relaxing.
Toronto is a special city, and the environment is perfect for the arts; free and alive. I'm a New Yorker, and Toronto reminds me of a much cleaner New York, so it's like coming home after your mom just cleaned your room for you; for me that's a lovely environment.
My parents divorced when I was 10, but when my father was there, he was trying to create almost like a little prison for me.
How do we create beauty in a broken world? How do we create a view of sustainability in an economy that is crashing? How do we reconfigure our lives, how do we pick up the pieces and create a meaningful life? So, yes, we have a different form of leadership but the questions remain the same.
I am against the line and all its consequences: contours, forms, composition. All paintings of whatever sort, figurative or abstract, seem to me like prison windows in which the lines, precisely are the bars.
Waihi Beach. It's a lovely beach, and we're right on the shore and I get a lot of pleasure out of waking up in the morning and hearing the waves roll in.
I'm a work horse. I like to work. I always did. I think that there is such a thing as energy, creation overflowing. And I always felt that I have this great energy and it was bound to sort of burst at the seams, so that my work automatically took its place with a mind like mine. I've never had a day when I didn't want to work. I've never had a day like that. And I knew that a day I took away from the work did not make me too happy. I just feel that I'm in tune with the right vibrations in the universe when I'm in the process of working. ... In my studio I'm as happy as a cow in her stall.
You're always looking at last year, or 10 years ago, or your school days, or your teenage years, your formative years. Because that's exactly what they are, they're your formative years.