Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
There's a lot psychologically going on in boxing... I think I relate to some of it. I have a respect for it. It's like performing, but it's also this crazy, self-destructive thing.
I started playing piano when I was eight, and I went on to study piano in school, so I have a background in classical piano and studied composition in school. Writing music came later.
I prefer to work with mystery, but that doesn't work well in an academic environment. They want you to analyze what you're doing, which is toxic to the creative process for people like me.
I don't know how well I work in traditions. I don't know if it's just the way I listened to music growing up and never having my foot in one particular world, and just wanting to do my own thing.
I thought I was gonna get a doctorate in composition or be a composer and be at a university for the rest of my life, mostly because my parents are academics, and that was the logical thing to do.
I think what's interesting in L.A. is that there's a lot of variety because L.A. is very spread out. I think there is a lot I don't know about, to be completely honest. It's a very mysterious town.
I usually like to hide my vocals behind the music. I don't like to hide them consciously, but I have a tendency to prefer the vocal at the same level as everything else and put lots of reverb on it.
I don't write thinking directly about what I'm feeling, usually. I just let myself write whatever comes out without it necessarily being directly a translation of what I'm aware that I'm feeling, you know?
I take music very seriously, but it's important to me that my music is - I don't know if 'intuitive' is the word, but there's a really important element of something kind of mysterious. It's not academic or esoteric.
I was in school for four years writing music to please my teachers. That was not music I liked. And when I make music that isn't for something I want to make, and it's to please other people, it's - the outcome is really bad.
There's definitely been a focus on the literary aspects of my music, and I always get a little cringey because I don't feel like I'm particularly literary. There's a sort of academic label that's put on me that seems inaccurate.
The Beatles, even Radiohead, all of my favorite stuff I'd play on the piano. But it was all very secret - for me, for fun. I wasn't going to record myself playing those songs, and it never occurred to me to write a song of my own.
When I'm depressed is when I'm not interested in writing anything, whereas some people, I think, are spurred to creativity through their personal experiences and through depression. And for me, it's a very low place, and it's not fruitful.
I do have a big problem with the idea of music as a form of communication unless it's political - and that's where it's tricky because a lot of music is political, even if it's not overtly so. But my music isn't that; it's about a feeling.
Saying that something is accessible gives it this implication that people need something, and thinking that we know what people need or want is really unpleasant. I don't like to think that way, like, predicting what it is that the people want.
I usually work in a room which is totally cluttered with my mess, and there's stuff everywhere, and it's kind of chaotic because I am a very messy person. I could totally write in a pristine environment, but it would mean I would have to be at someone else's house.
'Have You in My Wilderness,' the title track, is about the idea of possessing a person, or saying, 'You're mine; you're in my world now.' I was drawn to that as an idea less from my own experience than from listening to music written by men that was kind of male gaze-y.
'Betsy' is one of my favorites because it is the one to which I've imposed the least clear narrative. To me, it's so much more about the feeling - desperation - than any kind of story at all. There's very little imagery or character development; it's just about a deep and desperate search for something.
One thing I do like about L.A. is the fact that you can be - whether you're famous or it's just a matter of, like, seeing people you know all the time on the street, you can be pretty anonymous and walk around and, like, not run into people, because it's such a big city and because a lot of people drive.