12th December 2016 | for Creatives | music, reaching your audience, artist's message, value the art, Sharon Van Etten, art interpretation |
"People listen to music and interpret it in their own way, but it's weird when a thing that has helped you through a hard time becomes your career."
"Don't talk to me in market speak. Tell me about your characters and the crisis they are trapped in, and make it seem serious, big."
"Nothing is so destructive in a field of artistic effort as a stock term of abuse. Anyone could say of any short story, 'A mere anecdote' just as anyone can say 'Incoherent!' of any novel or of any sonata that isn't studiously monotonous. The recession of enthusiasm for this compact, amusing form is closely associated in my mind with that discouraging imputation."
"There are certain kinds of songs you write that are just fun songs—the lyric really can't survive without the music. But for most of what I do, the idea behind it was to try and bring a novelist's eye to it, and, within the framework of rock and roll, to try to have that lyric there so somebody who enjoys being engaged on that level could have that and have the rock and roll too."
What is success in the 21st century? It's novels that invent their own unique form, spring from a personal place, enact a passionate intent, and prove it by reaching a broad readership. It's both great reviews and great sales. It's moving hearts and changing minds. It's winning accolades and winning the devotion of readers. It's finding a way through your fiction to convey what you alone see, yet we all come to accept as the truth.
"Later on I find out what [a lyric] was really about. Lots of times I'll think it's about one thing and as I get a little distance from it—and by distance I mean like, say, seven or eight years—it suddenly becomes very obvious to me it was about something else entirely. It happens especially onstage. Periodically I do something older and I suddenly realize 'God—listen to what this is about. I can't believe that I said this in public.'"
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