Du Yun Quotes

With a Nine Inch Nails show, I'm building on a legacy that comes with a certain set of expectations. I have to push that forward, I have to reinvent myself, I have to feel current and valid.

Nothing I'm doing musically is revolutionary in any way, shape, or form.

When you make something that everyone likes, it's very easy to say, "Well, I'll just repeat that." Because that was easy. I have a formula. But creatively, it's not very interesting.

If you take your last album & try to copy it, then thats sure to hell the way to stagnation. And that makes me bored...and if I'm bored then the music is boring and so are the band!

What I think is interesting is that the more you do, you have to invent a book of rules of what you can do and what you can't do. And the very real danger is that if your book of rules becomes a book of cliches.

Genre expectations can kill creativity. If you do something different, it will get hated. The best filmmakers can do everything on the approval list and knock it out of the park. For me, I have a hard time being creative when I have to color in between the lines.

Originality is the one thing which unoriginal minds cannot feel the use of.

What I like on Kickstarter is when I see real innovation and I see people building something new. It makes me sad when I see things that are just the same technology; you aren't passing the technology forward.

Knowledge comes from the past, so it's safe. It is also out of date. It's the opposite of originality... Experience is the opposite of being creative.

Never try to make the same record twice, even when people are screaming for the same sound.

I should probably confess that I get bored easily, which explains my reluctance to work with formula, tropes, whatever.

Publishers just want you to write the same book over and over again. But why would I want to do that? It would be like putting on a threadbare dressing-gown day after day.

It's just that if you're not disruptive everything seems to be repeated endlessly - not so much the good things but the bland things - the ordinary things - the weaker things get repeated- the stronger things get suppressed and held down and hidden.

I think that the things that are interesting sometimes, when you're striving for a sound, you just get it wrong 'cause of your own limitations. That's when you get something kind of original.

Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility.

To keep creating something with this type of music, you have to take it out of the box.

If you're ahead of your time, who's going to listen? If you're behind the times, it's boring.

I don't find myself so exercised by a desperation to be new.

A lot of songs are derivative of each other. Sometimes you need to take a departure from what you do to something that's slightly different in order to get inspiration.

He who resolves never to ransack any mind but his own, will be soon reduced, from mere barrenness, to the poorest of all imitations; he will be obliged to imitate himself, and to repeat what he has before often repeated.

Miles Davis would have this lineup of all these amazing musicians and one day would just say, 'We're done.' After tons of great records and tickets sold, he said, 'Now I'm going to grow my hair out and play my horn through a wah-wah pedal.' Rather than play it safe, he went on.

You're not going to reinvent the wheel every time you go out, because that would disappoint the audience.

I think most producers and MCs are constantly in this competition, but it's usually with yourself. It's usually wanting to be innovative: wanting to catch yourself when you're doing the same thing or throwing out the same art you've already done.

I fear becoming formulaic. Some of my books are.

I think the people who are saying jazz has to sound a particular way, or, 'What you're doing isn't jazz,' are just scared because they can't do it. A lot of them just aren't talented enough to do anything new, honestly.