02024-10-13 | Culture, Music, Quotes
Brian Eno once said:
These people are not “making a record”, they are making music because it creates for them a world they want to inhabit, makes them feel alive, and that life floods out over the edges of the recording and into you, the listener. And that, I’m starting to think, should be an artist’s minimum ambition.
That statement really hits home for me. From the first album on, I tried to create a sonic place that felt like home. Every home was a little different, as if they were in different locations, with slightly different cultures, but still inhabited by me and the other musicians. NF was very romantic, but by the time The Hours… was created the home had become much more multifaceted. slow was a harbor in a storm for me. Rain Poems was part of crafting a new home, after leaving Santa Fe and my studio.
Another thing the quote reminds me of is that it’s not content that I am creating. That word is a put down that originated in Silicon Valley. It belittles what we do. It denies the years of practice that go into music. It denies the experience of creating and making music.
Calling music “content” is like calling a lovely meal “food“.
— ottmar
It’s not untrue but it misses the point entirely.
02023-06-19 | Quotes
Well, I hope that we can manifest that [Arnold] Schönberg thing, “Every look can become a poem, every sigh might become a novel,” because that’s what happens with singing and music, just a note can become your life.
Every Look Can Become a Poem: Pedro Costa Discusses “The Daughters of Fire” | MUBI
Music, not philosophy, expresses the innermost nature of all life and existence.
from The World as Will and Representation by Schopenhauer
02023-03-16 | Quotes
The Danger of the road is not in the distance; ten yards is far enough to break a wheel.
– Meng Chiao
Might as well go far then…
02023-03-07 | Computer, Music, Quotes
Tonight I sat with one of my very best friends, whose dad just passed. The moon hung over us unseen, as we talked about making music and waxed toward our brightest selves and felt dad and moon nonetheless there with us. I would not trade that for anything.
There has been a lot of talk lately about replacing art, and the artifacts of humanity’s questioning reach into the unknown, with facsimiles generated by machines trying to extract its essence.
I say that’s rubbish. Real creativity, by its nature, is impossible to replicate or pinpoint. It is like water, and will seep its way through the smallest crevice until it opens into a floodgate. There is no faking it. There is no escaping it.
If you can live with crap for your art, blow yourself away. I, for one, want to hear and sing a real song with my friend. If you’re with me, say so. And the rest of y’all, please keep your formulas on your side of the fence.
Robby Rothschild on Instagram
02023-01-31 | Book, Music, Quotes
They say, a song can be a bridge, ma, but I say it’s also the ground we stand on. And maybe we sing to keep ourselves from falling. Maybe we sing to keep ourselves.
from On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
02023-01-24 | Computer, Quotes
Nick Cave responds to a song written by ChatGPT in the style of Nick Cave.
Since its launch in November last year many people, most buzzing with a kind of algorithmic awe, have sent me songs ‘in the style of Nick Cave’ created by ChatGPT. There have been dozens of them. Suffice to say, I do not feel the same enthusiasm around this technology. I understand that ChatGPT is in its infancy but perhaps that is the emerging horror of AI – that it will forever be in its infancy, as it will always have further to go, and the direction is always forward, always faster. It can never be rolled back, or slowed down, as it moves us toward a utopian future, maybe, or our total destruction. Who can possibly say which? Judging by this song ‘in the style of Nick Cave’ though, it doesn’t look good, Mark. The apocalypse is well on its way. This song sucks.
The Red Hand Files – Issue #218
