A Quote by Ted Kooser
In my work, I really try to look at ordinary things quite closely to see if there isn't a little bit of something special about them. I'm trying to make something as nearly perfect as I can out of words.
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I spend quite a bit of time thinking about my students. I look at them, at their work, I listen to what they tell me, and try to figure out who they might become in the best of all possible worlds. This is not easy. Students try to give you clues; sometimes they look at you as if imploring you to understand something about them that they don't yet have the means to articulate. How can one succeed at this? And how can one do it 20 times over for all the students in a class? It's impossible, of course. I know this, but I try anyway. It's tiring.
It's just that you're about to do something out of the ordinary. And after you do something like that, the everyday look of things might seem to change a little. Things may look different to you than they did before. But don't let appearances fool you. There's always only one reality.
I'm looking for things where, like with 'Ten,' I don't look like me, and I'm playing something a bit different. I'm just trying to flex a different muscle and see if it works. I've saved the world and killed monsters and done all that. Now I want to try something a bit different and a bit more challenging.
I don't really know too many designers. I like a lot of what Kanye West has done with Yeezy, but I think it's a bit too, how you say, elevated; it's a little bit too special. Like he's trying to make something that's kind of a little bit too cool sometimes.
I make work that tries to sort of connect with something really, really familiar. I don't try to make work that's original. I try to make work that's quintessential. That's what I mean about the familiar. It operates with stuff that people already know or information that they already have and I try to just use that. Quintessential means like the perfect minimalist sculptor.
Every film tries to advance the state of the art, at least a little bit. Brand new techniques? A lot of them are just evolutionary: we're just building on something that's like something we've done before and just trying to do it a little bit better or make it a little bit more realistic.
When I speak of drama, I'm really referring to just 'desperately trying not to be ordinary'. Trying to get something that has a little bit of friction, conflict, absurdity.
That was probably one of the things that if I look back at my career and say what is something I would try and do a little bit differently, I’d try and be a little bit more loose playing the game. Have a little more fun doing it.
I have a gut reaction to stuff that I read. Either it's a filmmaker that I really want to work with, or it's a story that I really want to be a part of and help serve, or there's a character that I feel I can bring something unique to. That's really what it's about. I would go crazy, if I just relied on the same tricks and did the same thing, all the time. It was just be no fun, at all. I really do need to try something different, every time out, and do something that scares me, a little bit.
I only try to talk to people about things I really do use in my shot. If I see something similar and something that will help them, then you try to come to them and say, 'I think I might have something for you. Think about it if you like it.' If they do, and they want to keep talking about it, then I will.
The idea of songwriting is a transformative thing, and what I do with songwriting is take situations that are quite ordinary and transform them in some way. Apart from things like the murder ballads, the songs I write, at their core, are quite ordinary human concerns, but the process of writing about them transforms them into something else.
I mean, part of the justification for art is art history, the fact that you're part of this tradition. You can't really operate outside of it. So looking for what this work is really about, if I look at Velázquez, if I look at Las Meninas or The Tapestry Weavers [1657] or something and really study it and try to figure out what that painting is really about, then I find relationships between what I'm trying to do and what he was doing.
Ask anyone what that means, what it means to see a miracle, and they will say that it's something impossible, but they mean that a miracle is something formerly believed to be impossible that turns out not to be, not to be impossible, in other words, but possible after all. If this were really true, then miracles would be the most ordinary things in the world, the most uninspiring things in the world, and what can one expect from people who have never been anything but ordinary and uninspired.
I went to jail at 17. While I was there, I discovered that I could write. Once I started making some songs, other inmates wanted to know a little bit more about what I was doing, and they asked me to rap for them. They really liked it, and I made it a goal to come out and try to make something out of the music.
To me, photography is an art of observation. It's about finding something interesting in an ordinary place... I've found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.
Sometimes I have to criticize guys to try to make it fun, I mean, I'm out there trying to bust other people. I want all these guys to do well, but when they do something stupid or don't play well, I try not to kill 'em, I try to make 'em laugh a little bit.
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