I think sometimes when people start doing improv there's some regression towards trying to replicate the "good" improvisers that they've read about in their improv books or heard about from their teachers. That's understandable, because they're trying to learn technique and stuff, but I actually think that my favorite performers are ones who have unique improv technique but also have a unique point of view that you can feel with them and their performances.
A truly good book is something as wildly natural and primitive, mysterious and marvelous, ambrosial and fertile as a fungus or a lichen.
My films, no one else will do.
One of the things that made Bob so unique and wonderful is that he had a genuine style, like Balanchine, like de Mille.
There are lots of really good guitarists, but they play with the same pedals that everybody else does. Everybody buys the same pedals, so the sounds tend to be the same. I am looking for different ways of doing that without having to spend days and weeks and months fooling around with pedals, which I don't enjoy.
I've come to appreciate how special a song is compared to other art forms, because you can carry it around in your head and your heart, and it remains part of you. It just comes as natural as a bird to me, always did. It's the way singer-songwriters make sense of our lives.
No translation can possibly be perfect. Every production and every performance is a different path up the mountain, and nobody ever makes it all the way to the summit.
Art is Art. Everything else is everything else.
Whenever a dope artist comes out of nowhere, the first thing you do is try and compare it to stuff until you realise that that artist is just them, and eventually those comparisons will stop.
Some people feel that it's controversial if I say that because my dad is known as a political artist. But I don't really believe that he was a political artist. I think some of his songs were political, and I think they were incredible because he was able to make art that was political and that wasn't pedantic. But I think he was unique in being able to do that.
... you watch Jimi Hendrix literally reinvent the instrument. He was playing from somewhere else. He was really a kind of hybrid, and I can't even begin to imagine where he came from
A novel captures essence that is not possible in any other form.
No one has been able to define or synthesize that precarious, splendid, and perhaps untidy instant when the creative process begins. This is what the uniqueness of the artist is all about. The transcendent right of the artist is the right to create even though he may not always know what he is doing.
It was just like a dream. I could have ended up with an album that's not all that different from anything else coming out of Nashville. Mutt made the difference. He took these songs, my attitude, my creativity, and colored them in a way that is unique.
I have no style. There are certain people who just have a visual sense that defines their work. You could probably watch 30 seconds of anything they do and you'll know exactly who directed it. I don't have that skill.
I know that starting out as a young band, it's really easy to get lost with bands that sound the same or with the plethora of music that's out there.
When I began as an artist, I already did not like expressionism, or abstract expressionism, because abstract painting had already been done. I did not want to belong to any one group or the other, and I'm not one or the other.
A certain strangeness, something of the blossoming of the aloe, is indeed an element in all true works of art: that they shall excite or surprise us is indispensable.
My films are completely new. I am not similar to anybody in the history of movies.
Music, uniquely among the arts, is both completely abstract and profoundly emotional. It has no power to represent anything particular or external, but it has a unique power to express inner states or feelings. Music can pierce the heart directly; it needs no mediation.
There are two indices of genuine art: it is inimitable and it is ineffable.
Anytime I shoot a video, I just think of anything I can do to set myself apart from everybody in the music industry.
I think it's important to say something. If you're making music it's kinda' like, oh, cool, so is everyone else.
I don't feel like I sound like anybody from Houston. I don't really feel like I have that Houston flow, that Houston sound. I feel like it's a mixture of all the things I've listened to growing up, or even my mom, in a way. I feel like I have my own style.
I'm from the school of putting a lot of hours of practice into playing. But at the same time you have to write original music - that's really important, because that's the things that's going to separate you from everybody else, that's going to give you your unique voice as a music that you create.
