Flying Lotus Quotes

When I sit down to make music, I try to enter a flow; I always open a blank session and just make something that I feel like making.

I think meditation helps greatly with creativity. If it's a pure expression of yourself no matter what it is or what medium, it's going to shine. It's going to resonate.

I learned...that inspiration does not come like a bolt, nor is it kinetic, energetic striving, but it comes into us slowly and quietly and all the time, though we must regularly and every day give it a little chance to start flowing, prime it with a little solitude and idleness.

I've followed the lives of great musicians and have learned that you don't have to always write in pain. You have all of your past experiences, feelings, and thoughts that you can turn on when you need them and turn off when you don't.

I said, other people can write songs, let's see if I can. So the first 400 or 500 wound up on the floor somewhere. Then I wrote one called Melissa.

For me, something will come in my head and I'll either end up calling my cell phone to record it, or I'll just pick my guitar up and see what comes out. Sometimes it sucks, sometimes it doesn't. So there's really no set method behind it.

I don't meditate before I play or compose, but I see playing and composing as meditative acts.

I used to look at composing music as problem solving. But as I get older, it's not about problem solving anymore. There are no solutions, because there are no problems. You just turn the tap and it flows out.

When I paint, I definitely live in the present, like someone in a shower whistling or singing.

I just try to get inside the song and imagine what comes next.

It's true when they say songwriting is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. In truth, what happens is... songs comes through you.

I only do solo albums when songs are screaming at me to be let out of my mind.

I believe that painting should come through the avenues of meditation rather than the canals of action.

I've done a lot of albums and I kinda know when I'm onto something that was inspirational for me to record and create, and this was one of those projects where I really enjoyed making the album.

Emotions are the fuel to really move you along - that's the only way you can create music. If you don't feel any emotions, it's not going to happen.

Sometimes I think that I want to do something strictly basic, really simple. Just with a few chords. But I won't have anything more than two or three sentences in my head. That kind of evaporates once I start playing and then it goes off in whatever direction.

I feel like I'm stepping into a place of spiritual contemplation every time I enter a studio; it's always had a certain magic to me that has never worn off with familiarity.

If at noon you sit down and there's just silence or blank tape, in an hour if you have a song, that didn't exist an hour ago. Now it exists and it might exist for a long time. There's something empowering about that.

For me, playing music is like meditating - I just play and don't really think about what I'm doing, I just let it happen.

In my off-time, I do record. Once in a while, I'll just go into the studio if there's a really good song that I have in my head and want to do. I think, as artists, you're constantly in creative motion. If I stopped writing songs, then that's a part of me that would stop in my life, and I need constant motion.

When you get the right people together, writing music becomes very effortless.

My creative juices flow seasonally.

The source is always me, but when the inspiration is an amazing idea or entity, it gives the process of music making a very beautiful route to proceed on.

I called it 'Cloud 9' because that's the place I want to take people when they are listening to my music. It's also where I am when I make music.

I really like writing poetry and lyrics because it's one thing where I give up control. I don't feel like I need to be in control of it. I just sort of let it happen, and then I know when it's done. I know when it's finished.