Clips Split on burnout

There was a time when I wasn’t shooting a lot, because I wasn’t using the proper tool. Then my mentor told me I needed to invest in my tools, so I bought an $800 point-and-shoot, which is crazy, because they break. But now I never get burnt out on shooting my own work. I only feel “burnt out” when I’m future tripping, thinking about what’s next, what I “need” to be doing. I get burnt out on the fantasy of what my career will become. Showing my work in any capacity outside of Instagram gets me back on my path, into alignment with the present, with how I feel in the moment when I am shooting. 

Bob Dylan on being 80

The best thing about being 80 is that you outlive the clocks that have been chasing you. It’s freedom from that lie that nothing was ever under control. You don’t chase the parade anymore. You’re an old king from some vanished country. You’re harder to program. You’re not rushing to become anything, and you’re not haunted by the things that you did. You’re haunted by how little of it really mattered in the way you thought it would.

Ben Gibbard on success

There’s a really famous quote from Itzhak Perlman, the violinist. He’s doing this concert and breaks a string, then breaks a second string, and he’s trying to finish the piece with two of the four strings left. Afterward, somebody asks him what that experience was like, and he says something along the lines of, “Sometimes it’s the artist’s job to determine what they can make with what they have left.” As I get older, that quote resonates with me more because I put in a lot more work to get a lot less back. As long as I end up with 10 or 11 songs every three or four years, that’s really what matters to me at this point. It’s not even about being prolific. I’d rather put out a really good record every 10 years than constantly put out material just for the sake of putting out material. When I feel I’ve done the best with what I have left and what I have in front of me, I consider that a success. 

Nick Cave on pop

No one willingly wants to be indie. The great beauty of pop music is that it is a joy machine.

Michael Agzarian on giving hope

I feel as a creative … whether musicians, writers or whatever, they do instil a sense of hope in people who at times feel that everything is pretty hopeless.  

Larkin Miller on meeting music

There’s more than one “right” way to meet the music. One of my teachers used to say that if you move before the music, you’re anticipating it; if you move exactly with it you’re matching it; and if you move just slightly after, you’re responding to it. They’re all possibilities for one note and yet they all offer a completely different quality. I don’t try to own or claim the music. 

Linda Perry on progress

“What I’m probably most proud of is that I never think I’m good enough,” she says. “But that’s also my damage; I was raised that way; you know, not being good enough. That little dark gift my mother gave me actually became a pot of gold.” 

Bill Callahan on staying hydrated

A lot of people, me included, only have so many creative hours inside them every day. It’s a little thing that gets replenished every day—but just a certain amount, like a jug of water. That’s your water for the day. No matter how much you wish there was more water in that pitcher, it’s just like, “No, it’s empty, but it’ll probably be full tomorrow if you do your other responsibilities and take care of yourself.” I learned and accepted that creative work is a finite thing. I used to treat it like an infinite fountain that I would just bathe in for 14 hours a day, but then I realized I’m just sitting in it. There’s no new water coming out of the fountain.

The nature of the problem

 

Catherine O’Hara on the importance of having a sense of humor

My parents were blessed – they laughed until the end. That’s the best way to live, because there’s so much sadness. You’re really lucky if your sense of humor is encouraged, because I think we’re all born with it, and if it’s encouraged in your life, that’s a gift.

When you start working

 

Bill Callahan on media

If that person could see me in my life, they would not even dream of calling me a craftsman. I picture a craftsman as the guy who’s got his tools all labelled in boxes and shelves and knows where everything is. I’m more of a drunk professor; I like happenstance and coincidence and mistakes. I know nothing about synthesisers, but I’ll randomly pick one and turn it on and start recording. I press some buttons and play something and somehow try to make it work. I’m only precise about writing the lyrics and then the rest of it is more like: throw it at the wall. I don’t know anything about chord progressions. It’s more being open and receiving things from wherever they come from. I feel more like a medium.

Dominic Miller on music and sport

One of my arguments is that Australia needs a ministry of culture that unites art and sport 

I think I've mostly made the case on my other blog, but Mr Miller shares a great perspective on the topic in the video above.

Allie X on becoming creative

The problem with people becoming creatives, the hurdle that stands in their way, is judgment and insecurity a lot of the time. I would just reinforce that an idea is never fully formed when it first comes to mind. It’s like a little seed, and you just need to nurture it. Sometimes, it takes years, and sometimes, it takes a really short amount of time, but nothing needs to be fully formed or quote-unquote “professional” in its first iteration. 

Jimmy Chamberlin on AI-generated music

"Consume art with your heart" gets to an argument I believe about the emotional connection that humans expect in the media they consume.

Brian Eno on presets

I think what bothers me, which is exactly part of what you’re saying, is the possibility of not making a mistake at all, of making things that always come with this professional finished gloss of what a real pop song looks like or what a real picture looks like. And I think that’s lethal.

I have an architect friend called Rem Koolhaas. He’s a Dutch architect, and he uses this phrase, “the premature sheen.” In his architectural practice, when they first got computers and computers were first good enough to do proper renderings of things, he said everything looked amazing at first.

You could construct a building in half an hour on the computer, and you’d have this amazing-looking thing, but, he said, “It didn’t help us make good buildings. It helped us make things that looked like they might be good buildings.”

I went to visit him one day when they were working on a big new complex for some place in Texas, and they were using matchboxes and pens and packets of tissues. It was completely analog, and there was no sense at all that this had any relationship to what the final product would be, in terms of how it looked.

It meant that what you were thinking about was: How does it work? What do we want it to be like to be in that place? You started asking the important questions again, not: What kind of facing should we have on the building or what color should the stone be?

When I see people fiddling around with synthesizers — this has always been a problem with synthesizers — they always come with a bank of sounds ready-made for people who don’t want to learn how to program them, which, it turns out, is most people.

I remember talking to Yamaha once, which had just produced the most successful synthesizer of all time, which was the DX7. And I said, “You should really make these a little bit easier to program.”

And they said, “Well, we don’t bother because nobody tries to change them anyway. We often get them back for repair, and we can tell if somebody has tried to change the programming, and nobody’s ever done it. They’ve just used the presets.”

That seems, to me, a kind of mental laziness that I really don’t think fits well with making new things.

Sedona on success and failure

I think success is being able to wake up and make something, no matter where you are or how you’re feeling. That feels like a win. Just no matter where you or things are in life, just being able to tune into that deeper part of yourself through songwriting.

Failure is an interesting word… I think failure is being disingenuous about how you’re actually feeling and dishonest with yourself about the parts you want to share.

Patricia Lockwood on transmissions

“A poem is just something that happens. You have to follow it all the way through, and it constitutes its own event.”

Graham "Buzz" Bidstrup on the privilege of drumming

 “…[W]hen you're drumming, you're just sitting there watching everything go on.
"So, I could tell what songs went down well, because I could see people either bopping or not bopping, jumping up and down or not jumping up and down.
"So, I knew about tempo. I knew about what songs went off, what parts of songs went off, and I could also see what parts of the band weren't working.
"So, it's a very privileged position to be the drummer."

Thoreau on living

“Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.”