A Quote by Van Dyke Parks
By doing what I do, by just staying, pardon me, true to myself and maintaining my maverick position, unbranded, unbought in a corporate sense, I've managed to migrate to and participate in the work of people far younger than my own children. This astounds me. It makes me feel all at once, beyond retirement age, as a player in the present tense. I'm a lucky guy.
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I feel like everyone directs their own career according to their taste, what they migrate to emotionally and what kind of artists they want to work with. And I'm lucky enough to be in a position where I can wait six months for a project that really interests me.
Instead of my telling people what they should be doing, it makes more sense to be an inspiration to them. I'm not perfect by any means. I've done some stupid things, and I'm very aware of that. In this day and age, you have to have a sense of humor about it, and at the same time, it's made me a lot more aware that you have to take responsibility for your actions. For me, it's about staying on the path. If I slip, that's OK; just get back up and keep focused.
What libraries give you is all three tenses - the past tense - the present tense in which we live and the future that we can only imagine. These places have teachers who are living and dead and we are lucky to have them. If I sit here and read Aristotle, he is speaking to me across a thousand years - more than a thousand years. That sense that I am in the company of the great greatest people who ever lived is a humbling experience but a liberating experience.
I read. It's also nice for me to get involved in schoolwork, which is a totally different world than acting. It makes me feel like I am doing things that normal people are doing at my age.
[The Middle East conflict ] just kind of ran its course for me. For a long time I could justify doing it to myself, no matter how irrational it was. It was important to me and my work. And I just don't feel it in the same way any more. When it comes up and it's important to me, I'll do it, but more out of sense of duty than desire - which used to be a big part of it.
I'm not a Starbucks guy. I'm a Dunkin Donuts guy, but I like to pay for the coffee of the other folks behind me in line. It typically costs me less than $10, and makes the other people feel good, but more importantly, it makes me feel so good, and random acts of kindness change the world one person at a time.
Sometimes when people get success they forget about the people that pointed them there or championed them into this position. I pride myself on really understanding. I wouldn't even call it keeping it real. I just call it keeping it me. When they tell me, "You're doing what you're supposed to do," it makes me go ten times even harder, because I know that there are people on the sidelines and they're watching me. They're cheering for me. I want to be the best me I could possibly be when it comes to them.
I wondered where the person was who had taken my place, who wanted to know what news people had been told. I'm always looking for the person who replaces me, who thinks the things I do, who fills in for me when I'm not there. I know there is someone younger than me doing what I did and someone older doing what I will do, and someone my age being just like me.
Focusing on the way I look makes me uncomfortable. I try to focus on the way I feel - I know what makes me feel better about myself. Reading my child a story makes me feel great, doing my hair nicely doesn't.
I feel like Prince's artistry inspired me as far as staying true to myself and my artistry and what is important to me in my life and applying, you know, all the things that I ever been through into my music, the same way he kinda did in 'Purple Rain.'
People in the U.S. didn't know what taekwondo was. But they saw what the Lopezes were able to do with all the love and support and hard work we put in, and what we accomplished. It makes me feel real lucky to be in a position like that.
In a lot of the art world, you have to present yourself as you know what you're doing at a young age. Music gave me another outlet. The 'no wave' bands were such an inspiration; it felt so free - once you start doing it, it's hard to stop. But I can't get away from art. It comes back around. I wouldn't be true to myself if I didn't pursue it.
Play me something that makes me feel; This soul inside me is made of steel. Brain is breathing, but heart’s not beating And, babe, I need you to make things real. Walk inside me without silence, Kill the past and change the tense. Empty gnawing and the ache is soaring; Take me places that make more sense.
There are times when I'm super-overwhelmed, and everything feels like it's hitting me in the face at once, but I think what's keeping me calm, and who I am by staying true to myself, is my whole family being so supportive and keeping me grounded. They treat me the exact same way they treated me years and years ago.
Adidas has invested so much into this collab and into me. It'd be easy for any brand, with some of the spearheads that they have in their roster, just to say, "We got this guy and that guy over there, the Pusha T thing can just be - eh." But they haven't spared any expense, they've let their creativity run wild, and it really makes me feel that I'm a part of a family. It makes me feel like they enjoy watching the growth of Pusha T.
I start to see that I surround myself with broken people; more broken than me. Ah, yes, let me count your cracks. Let's see, one hundred, two... yes, you'll do nicely. A cracked companion makes me look more whole, gives me something outside myself to care for. When I'm with whole, healed people I feel my own cracks, the shatters, the insanities of dislocation in myself.
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