Zitat des Tages von Nick Cave:
'Inspiration' is a word used by people who aren't really doing anything.
I don't know, maybe Australian humour isn't supposed to be funny. It's as dry as the Sahara, and I think people miss that.
An artist's duty is rather to stay open-minded and in a state where he can receive information and inspiration. You always have to be ready for that little artistic Epiphany.
I love performing. I can get to be that person I always wanted to be - godlike.
If you look around, complacency is the great disease of your autumn years, and I work hard to prevent that.
I'm not saying this in a condescending kind of way, but it's quite simple: The making of America was a heroic thing. Australia has a much murkier, much more complex view of its history. It's just full of all these open wounds we don't really know what to do with.
The rock star is dying. And it's a small tragedy. Rock stars have blogs now. I have no use for that kind of rock star.
The concept of God in America is very different than it is in England. Because we see the horrendous outcome of religion as being an American thing, in which the name of God has been hijacked by a gang of psychopaths and bullies and homophobes, and the name of God has been used for their own twisted agendas.
Writing is a necessary thing for me, just to keep myself level. It has beneficial effects on my life.
The idea of songwriting is a transformative thing, and what I do with songwriting is take situations that are quite ordinary and transform them in some way. Apart from things like the murder ballads, the songs I write, at their core, are quite ordinary human concerns, but the process of writing about them transforms them into something else.
At some point you start seeing the difference between what you really want, and what is your priority order. I feel that today I know what I want. That's the problem with perspective, as well as focus and concentration.
I don't feel I'm thrown around by the winds of taste and fashion.
I see it as my duty in some way is to be out in the world as an Australian putting forward what I consider to be authentic Australian music.
I've always had an obligation to creation, above all.
Getting married, for me, was the best thing I ever did. I was suddenly beset with an immense sense of release, that we have something more important than our separate selves, and that is the marriage. There's immense happiness that can come from working towards that.
I don't really do Japanese interviews. I don't think there's much call for me in Japan.
The more information you have, the more human our heroes become and consequently the less mysterious and godlike. They need to be godlike.
I've always been at war with the guitar. All vocalists are fighting a war with the electric rhythm guitar.
I write a lot, and very often I write a couple of lines that are particularly revealing in some kind of way. And then as a few more lines get added and a piece gets added, eventually the song pretty much takes over and you can't really find a way to change those things.
To my undying shame, I do read reviews. I don't read them all, but I like to get some kind of idea how things are going.
The more settled I've become, the more problematic my characters have become. There was a period when I wrote sensitive and gentle songs and these came at a time when life was at its most destructive. I think you write about what you need, on some level.
I love rock-n-roll. I think it's an exciting art form. It's revolutionary. Still revolutionary and it changed people. It changed their hearts. But yeah, even rock-n-roll has a lot of rubbish, really bad music.
L.A. is full of screenwriters. I don't know why. On many levels, it's such a thankless occupation.
The blues is instilled in every musical cell that floats around your body.
People think I'm a miserable sod but it's only because I get asked such bloody miserable questions.
There are methods to creating a mayhem that sounds different from your usual mayhem. Because mayhem and a heavy drum backbeat end up sounding like Green Day or something. But if you put a different beat within it to create some air and lightness, the chaos comes through better.
What you're really after when you see a film or listen to a song is a singular vision, and I'm not sure how much of that you really get in Hollywood.
I used to believe that if I could do certain things - write a book or be a successful musician - that I'd be transformed into a happy person, but it doesn't work that way.
When I perform onstage, I'm actually kind of nearsighted, so I don't have any real, true understanding of what the audience is like.
I consider myself to be first and foremost a comic writer. The way I entertain myself - especially in those long and grim hours in the office - is to write stuff I find funny.
Personally I find the story of Christ incredibly moving.
The idea of acting is something that absolutely repulses me. I just can't do it. I'm terrible at it. I get roped into films every now and then, and it's always a disaster.
Writing screenplays makes me a better musician because it clears my head. After writing a movie, I go running back to music as fast as I can.
The big problem with songwriting for me is starting a new song. It's the thing where all the anguish exists, not in the writing of the song, but the starting of the new song. What do I write about? I never know.
Musicians are at the bottom of the creative pyramid and authors are at the top, and many people think it's unacceptable for someone to attempt to jump from the bottom to the top of the pyramid.
The only person who can say they're happy getting old is someone who isn't actually old yet. Every day, I get less and less happy about that idea.
