July 2011
1 post
May 2011
24 posts
“I really believe that art is not part of reality. It belongs to a spiritual dimension. Music is a transcendent language that allows the communication of a deeper joy. Music is a powerful force.”
—Sufjan Stevens (via fuckyeahsufjanstevens)
“Most of the music is the result of sound, not songs. It’s a very intuitive process and I can say that this is my least “focused” album. I’m learning to cherish mishaps and coincidences in the recording process. Sloppiness can be beautiful in music. Take Kanye West’s latest album. That’s very cleverly put together, but there’s a lot of room left for noise, disturbing sounds, exciting voices and particular structures. The vitality and uniqueness of his voice are done much more justice.”
—Sufjan Stevens (via fuckyeahsufjanstevens)
- Radar Online: If you could change one thing about your fans, what would it be?
- Sufjan: Their earnestness. Some of my fans take me too seriously, and take themselves too seriously.
“I do believe that if I didn’t have the means of communicating my imagination through my work, I would probably recede into madness. There is a kind of grounding that music creates. It is a form for me to work through my dysfunctions, emotional and mental…I sometimes think we are all mentally disabled, in a way, but there are these structures in life that keep us in line, but sometimes we are too formalised and conditioned. Just look at children playing alone in their rooms, and the vastness of sounds and characters. They create all these beautiful things with their imagination, and we all have that, it is still in us.”
—Sufjan Stevens (via isittherightword)
“I believe in the force of language, and I believe that words create reality. But I think that reality will always be an illusion, it’s not actuality, it’s a representation, and so there’s a limited value and function for any symbol. It’s just an indication of a deeper, greater transcendent thing. I’ve started to realize more and more lately that language is a utility, but it’s also a futility.”
—Sufjan Stevens (via isittherightword)
“We’ve lived in a delusion and somehow created a social, civic network that makes us feel completely severed from the natural world. Which is one of the great mistakes we’ve made. […] I guess somehow we think we’re the ultimate species because of our consciousness, like we have this leverage of our cerebral power. But we’re animals, and it’s all about survival of the fittest. I think that our life is not our own. We have the short privilege of being stewards of these bodies. But I think there’s a lot to be learned from meditating on mortality. I don’t know if I buy into the apocalypse as a literal event, but I do see it as a… slow and inevitable death…”
—Sufjan Stevens (via fuckyeahsufjanstevens)
“Music is clearly fundamental to my life. It’s become necessary for my health. I think.. if I could no longer write music.. I’d die. That’s how I feel. I can’t explain it better than that.”
—Sufjan Stevens
March 2011
2 posts
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