A Quote by Stephen Malkmus
I'm sort of socially inept, so music is my way to connect to people. It's a means of socializing and having a life. Otherwise I wouldn't bother. I would just make home recordings and play them for myself. And that's not really healthy.
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That's why you put out records: hoping that people will connect with them. I mean, I play music for myself, for sure, and I would still play music even if people didn't like it. But it means a lot when it connects to people and they enjoy it. But it's funny: you get criticism as much as you get praise. It kind of evens out after awhile.
It's really important for me to live purposefully, and I feel that way putting music out in the world and having people connect with it. That means everything to me.
Healthy living involves taking care of myself - both mentally and physically. It means surrounding myself with positive and supportive people, as well as exercising and maintaining a well-balanced diet. At this point, healthy living is just a way of life.
My dream is that people will find a way back home, into their bodies, to connect with the earth, to connect with each other, to connect with the poor, to connect with the broken, to connect with the needy, to connect with people calling out all around us, to connect with the beauty, poetry, the wildness.
In my head, thought, I would love to do an interview where it's just sort of de-constructed - the talking points of Iraq - sort of the idea of, is this really the conversation we're having about this war? That if we don't defeat Al Qaeda in Iraq, they'll follow us home? That to support the troops means not to question that the surge could work. That, what we're really seeing in Iraq is not a terrible war, but in fact, just the media's portrayal of it.
Socializing is as exhausting as giving blood. People assume we loners are misanthropes, just sitting thinking, ‘Oh, people are such a bunch of assholes,’ but it’s really not like that. We just have a smaller tolerance for what it takes to be with others. It means having to perform. I get so tired of communicating.
At a young age, I really wanted to make music and make my own sort of thing. I'm sure if it wasn't music, it would have been writing, or it would have been maybe painting. I just always had the drive to try and make something with my hands and to just pull something out of myself and shape it and see it in front of me, if that makes any sense.
I'm legitimately having more fun doing music, but at the same time I worked my whole life for baseball. If I had to pick, I would probably pick music. I just connect more with the fact that other people connect with that I'm doing so much. It's a much cooler thing than being good at sports.
I've been trying to communicate with other people online all my life, because I was home-schooled, so I moved around. And that was pretty much my social life. That's how I grew up, meeting people and just expressing myself and socializing through the Web.
I never really planned on playing music. But it was a thing I'd always done, since I was young. So it just carried me away; I never really had to make a plan for it or make any decisions. It just sort of decided on me. And I don't know what the hell I would have done otherwise.
Artists should re-emphasize performance and de-emphasize recording. You always make more money if you have a healthy performing life than you will if you have even a moderately healthy recording life. Don't make recording the most important thing you do. Make performing the most important thing you do, and then you can make recordings and sell them at your shows, because record labels aren't going to be around to help you get on the radio stations, and the radio stations probably aren't going to play you anyway.
Twitter helps me connect to the people who help make my music, or the cycle of an album, complete. Without them experiencing the music, it doesn't really exist, so it doesn't make sense to not involve them.
Music is my catharsis for that. It's an incredible blessing that I have this way of expressing myself through music and lyric, and I'm so grateful for that in moments of pain or of suffering - that I have this means of channeling it; it's really amazing. My band as well - having them around and being able to jump on stage and bond together and share that energy is really uplifting as well.
I definitely prefer real-life endings. But I do like having an ending. I hate when a movie just sort of ends and is so open-ended you feel like it wasn't finished. I appreciate leaving things up to the interpretation of the audience and letting them make decisions about where things will go in the future - but the director has to make a decision; otherwise it is sort of a cop-out.
The creatives, they want to connect with people. These artists, the clothing designers, they want to connect with people the same way that music gets to connect with people. But the cost of silk is too expensive. And they won't lower their quality levels. So I can spend $2 million on a record and give it out in a democratic way. They could spend all their time making the greatest dress in the world, and it's just impossible to hand-make that many.
I hope that I can make music that helps people in some way or that they can connect with, and that I can just live a life where I'm surrounded by people that I love.
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