Every day, I kind of have in my brain a few slots of what I want to do. Like school, sleep, homework, 'Rookie,' hanging out with friends, mindless relaxation time, and then trying to do my own creative things.
I feel sorry for kids these days. They get so much homework. Remember the days when we put a belt around our two books and carried them home? Now they're dragging a suitcase. They have school all day, then homework from six until eleven. There's no time left to be creative.
Growing up in high school, I wasn't hanging out with friends every day or on the weekends. Doing normal high school kid things was something I was willing to give up.
My name is Ella; that's who I am at school, hanging out with friends, while I'm doing homework. But when I'm up on stage, 'Lorde' is a character.
Imagine trying to learn without a dry place to sleep, eat, and do homework. Children cannot succeed in school if their lives out of school are in total chaos.
You're trying to sleep off a debt that you've lumbered your brain and body with during the week, and wouldn't it be lovely if sleep worked like that? Sadly, it doesn't. Sleep is not like the bank, so you can't accumulate a debt and then try and pay it off at a later point in time.
The brain is a dynamic system that constantly processes and creates your reality. It works best if you balance all the things that the brain is good at. The brain is good at being adaptable, flexible, creative, and intelligent. But it's also good at playing and just being. A balanced life provides time - every day if possible - so that every function of the brain is allowed to come alive and flourish.
When you think of a teenager, you think of hanging out with friends a lot or going to a full-time school. On the weekends, my friends are staying up until, like, one in the morning, and then there's me fighting to stay up until eight.
With the advent of digital imaging I made the transition from trying to figure out how to do things to creating objects, characters and the whole cloth. It kind of freed up the analytical part of my brain and I had the opportunity to use more of the creative side of my brain for how things interact with light and integrate into stories.
I was viewed as a little bit of an outcast. I didn't have one group of friends who I hung out with every single day. I would have friends on my football team, friends in drama, friends in video production, and I would hand out with different people. I know that wasn't the normal thing to do in high school. The normal thing is to be ina group or be part of a clique. But for me, I love hanging out with different people and just having fun.
If you meet somebody and are attracted to someone, and the exquisite neurons in your brain and her brain intermesh properly, then things can be wonderful. It's not like homework. You don't have to work at the relationship.
If I waited until I felt creative, I would never have had a career. I long ago learned that a day that starts out badly, when nothing comes out on the page or comes out wrong, can suddenly turn into a good day a few hours later, when suddenly everything starts to click. The brain can be cajoled into being creative.
Kids who are in school just visit life sometimes, and then they have to stop to do homework or go to sleep early or get to school on time. They're constantly reminded they are preparing 'for real life,' while being isolated from it.
My mother has been my mentor in my life. The number one attribute was discipline. To be on time to school, never miss a day at school, and then checking out homework and making sure I was doing it correctly and signing me up for lots of activities, extra tests and classes.
I never really approach collaborations as kind of normal things where they're arranged and they happen because you've arranged them. I've always been like this, I just have friends I hang out with, and while we're hanging out, if music happens then it happens.
I want to see all the countries in the world and learn all the languages. I want to have thousands of friends and I want all my friends to be different. I want to play six instruments. I want to be the best in the world at two things. I want to be a great athlete and I want to be a great surgeon. I need to practice very hard every day. I need to sleep as little as possible. I need to read at least one major book every week. And I need to remember that my seventy years are going to go by too quickly.
Rookie year you get out there and want to make as many plays as possible, then second year you want to be perfect, and then you kind of find a combination between the two - making a lot of plays and trying to be as perfect as possible.