Filming, for me, is a way of approaching, little by little - of getting closer and closer to my subject. And that subject itself can transform, or it can remain the same.
When I begin working on a production, I don't really think about my previous album or albums. I try to have a real creative process.
It's a thrill to see the birth of an artist.
Every time you come out with an album or a song, you want to feel like you're growing a bit in what you are and giving people something that they can feel.
Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.
I've been making music since age five.
I was always a keen reader. I jotted down one or two things, but it never occurred to me to think of a job in writing. I thought that writers were like demi-gods. I don't know what I thought.
I've never been a very prolific person, so when creativity flows, it flows. I find myself scribbling on little notepads and pieces of loose paper, which results in a very small portion of my writings to ever show up in true form.
Everything that's created comes out of silence. Your thoughts emerge from the nothingness of silence. Your words come out of this void. Your very essence emerged from emptiness. All creativity requires some stillness.
Whenever I write a new song, it always happens when I come back from Europe or Egypt or something like that. It's always from travelling.
I've grown and changed, and I'm still making television and movies that I feel really proud of.
I couldn't have written things like 'Low' and 'Heroes,' those particular albums, if it hadn't have been for Berlin and the kind of atmosphere I felt there.
When I was nine, ten, I was super young, but I installed a program on my computer so I could start producing music. I just started messing around. Then, after a couple of years, I got better. I actually learned some tricks, so I knew what I was doing instead of just messing.
Art is never finished, only abandoned.
Writing every song is a little journey. The first note has to lift you.
Let's start at the very end: The postscript of Stephen King's 'On Writing' contains some of the most harrowing pages he has ever written. It's here that King describes the traffic accident that nearly killed him in June 1999.
Each thing leapfrogs. I do a Genesis project - like now, we're just finishing off an album - and then by the time the album is doing its thing, I could do nothing or I could do a film.
Music is the doorway that has led me to drawing, photography, and writing.
In my experience a painting is not made with colors and paint at all. I don't know what a painting is; who knows what sets off even the desire to paint?
When I was 19, I joined a rock band, and that's when I began to say, 'Okay, this is something that I could take seriously.' When I came to Minneapolis, it just refined everything.
One day, my mum bought me this music production software for my computer, and I started making beats... I realised it was more like production than a video game, but it was a video game when I was playing it. That's how I got into music production.
Finding your style is like putting puzzle pieces together.
I really only started doing film in '97. I mean, before then, I just pretty much did theater.
An artist needs to live to create, and to live means to suffer.
Art is never finished. It is only abandoned.
