Ravyn Lenae Quotes

People ask what was the first piece of music I wrote. There was no first piece.

I only live in my music, and I have scarcely begun one thing when I start on another. As I am now working, I am often engaged on three or four things at the same time.

Everything I see and hear... I will take ideas from anyplace, anywhere, anytime, and life has become a song to me. I'm always looking for a song.

That's what's great about the arts. Everything inspires you, and you get a chance to grow from watching other people and how they do their work.

Even when I don't think I'm writing, I'm writing. There's some part of my brain geared toward making songs up, and I know it's collecting things and I know when I get a moment to be by myself, that's when they come out.

For me, drawing is a way of navigating the imagination, and it remains the fundamental vehicle of my practice. Drawing allows me to be at my most inventive.

Nothing pleases me more than to go into a room and come out with a piece of music.

My songwriting process, and maybe loads of other people's, is just this sort of smashing together of emotions and stuff to make some music. It's kind of simple and really complex at the same time and, as you can see, incredibly hard to explain.

I genuinely find the most meaningful thing I do is to make music, but also to absorb some sort of creativity.

I never set out to write a certain kind of song, I just play my guitar and see if I catch something.

I have a piano and a guitar, and I tend to switch back and forth between those two instruments to help me get inspired.

Being creative is my idea of heaven. I'm just incredibly fortunate that I can do it in artwork. Watercolor is what I started out with. What I love about watercolor is that a lot of happy accidents occur.

When I work on a part, one of the things I love to do is to put together a collage of things, stuff I see or stuff that inspires me, images, whatever.

I wasn't in the art world at all as a kid; I was just creative, and we were always doing arts and crafts.

I'm not the sort of chap who can sit down and write music. When it comes, I'm happy.

Songwriting is a burst of inspiration and then a long bit of work and a tremendous bit of desperation.

I'm suspicious of the idea of categories in music and this idea of things being in boxes. To me, that seems unnatural. I write the music that somebody with my biography would write, and the thing that's always driven me is an enthusiasm for the material. I sort of follow the notes to where they want to go.

When I'm at home creating music, I usually wind up laughing. It's always, like, funny - like, what the hell did I just write?

You can't help but have ideas when you're inspired musically.

I try to imagine what the greatest song I could ever write would sound like, and then try to do it.

It's not that I'm trying to write another '7 Years' or a new version of 'Mama Said.' Songs just kind of come out of nowhere, and you need to catch them when they do.

I love being with artists because I'm always open to getting into something.

You know a trillion times more about art than me. But I’ve learned that it isn’t necessary to know all that much. You just make what you wanna see, right? It’s a game, right? It’s like being paid for dreaming.

Ideas for songs can come from something as simple as a photograph and letting my imagination run wild on an old photograph that I found, or to a film that I have seen or to just most of the time, just daily walking through life and keeping your eyes open.

You ask me where I get my ideas. That I cannot tell you with certainty. They come unsummoned, directly, indirectly - I could seize them with my hands - out in the open air, in the woods, while walking, in the silence of the nights, at dawn, excited by moods which are translated by the poet into words, by me into tones that sound and roar and storm about me till I have set them down in notes.