A Quote by Peter Gabriel

One thing that really appeals to me is this idea of music being a living thing that has an evolution that, in a way, enables the artist to sell a process rather than a piece of product.
Invest in the "process" rather than the product. Process living neutralizes the depleting and impoverishing effects of chronically living in anticipation. Even when impossible goals occasionally are reached, satisfactions derived from them are invariably disappointing unless the process has given ample satisfaction along the way.
I think the Internet has hurt music more than it has helped it. The idea of giving music away for free just bothers me. And, when one band or artist gives it away, it devalues the rest of the product from those who would like to make some money or a living from it.
One of the catches with being a dope artist is saying the same exact thing a trillion different ways, and being able to get across somehow differently every time. The way to express maturity and growth and evolution is to do that throughout the music.
I enjoy directing, but I really like acting more. The idea of controlling the whole thing is not something that really appeals to me as much as being able to just control the world of the character that I'm dealing with.
It became like a symbolic thing, to be “an artist.” After Duchamp, I realized that being an artist is more about a lifestyle and attitude than producing some product.
Another thing about creation is that every day it is like it gave birth, and it's always kind of an innocent and refreshing. So it's always virginal to me, and it's always a surprise. ... Each piece seems to have a life of its own. Every little piece or every big piece that I make becomes a very living thing to me, very living. I could make a million pieces; the next piece gives me a whole new thing. It is a new center. Life is total at that particular time. And that's why it's right. That reaffirms my life.
I hadn't known anything else, other than being an artist, and I needed to be a person for a while, really get to know myself without that whole thing [of selling music] surrounding me.
I think another thing is that we don't really want exclusivity. We accept that it is in the artist's interest to be on sale in every place where they sell music.
For me, writing music is a way of processing the world. It's not a concrete thing, as in, "This piece is about giraffes." It's much more of an emotional sort of thing. I want people to find something out about themselves through my music, something that was inaccessible before, something that they were suppressing, something that they couldn't really confront.
The thing about being on the majors, from the beginning, going into this, I was like, "I'm not going to be treated like a factory," because that's never the way it was done before. You're talking about a major label, we're talking about serious business; you're not an artist anymore, you're a business, you have to work in terms of product, you have to release a product, and I don't really think that way at all.
I often prefer the shapes within the raw materials to ‘do their thing’, as this makes it movre interesting for me. Sometimes a piece of hubcap fits in such a way that the shark becomes almost alive in my hands, climbing, twisting or just hanging motionless and predatory, and this gives me a buzz. It makes me feel like a vehicle for the creation process rather than a controller, and not knowing the exact outcome is exciting.
One thing I've heard that makes sense to me about grief is that there's this conception that it's a thing that you process, and then you're done processing it. But really it's not a thing that has an end, it's just what life is like now. You are living with this now, probably forever.
Music is like a conversation. One person says one thing that speaks with a harmonica, with a bass, with a drum. They're all conversating, and we're just trying to find a way to make conversation rather than blah, blah, blah. But it's not really so hard a thing to do if you know the way to approach it.
I'd rather be somewhere building a house, if I knew how. The whole idea of being a professional artist is like a demeaning kind of thing.
To me, it's pretty much the same thing - I just love playing music. But the cool thing about DJing is that I get to play other people's music, I can mix it up between our songs and a variety of musical genres. It also enables me to be more intimate with the audience.
No one's being precious about their music. They want the film to be great. And that was the huge lesson for me along the way to be a filmmaker. And yes, I'm leading the music department kind of thing and that responsibility with the music is with me, but really that job is one of many.
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