Artistic Stagnation Quotes

If you want to be an artist in the long run, it isn't necessarily a good axiom to repeat formulas over and over until they're used up.

It was like I had evolved to a certain stage where I was stuck in this songwriter bag as an image. But basically at heart, I'm a rocker. And I still am. But I was caught up in the singer/songwriter bag and I wasn't really enjoying it.

Artistic development is a thing of the past, sadly.

Language evolves and moves on. It is an organic thing. It is not stuck in an ivory tower, hung with expensive works of art.

I once wrote a short story called 'The Best Blues Singer in the World,' and it went like this: 'The streets that Balboa walked were his own private ocean, and Balboa was drowning.' End of story. That says it all. Nothing else to say. I've been rewriting that same story over and over again. All my plays are rewriting that same story.

I think sometimes with new characters, you can kind of hit a creative valley, and it's important to recognize when you're in that valley so you can get back out and get back to that peak.

Okay, so, when I was a kid, definitely the drawings and the illustration. Then I stopped in sixth grade or so. And then I started again when I was in my twenties. I really didn't progress since then, so the way I draw is the way I drew in sixth grade.

It's all about the balance. For musicians, me personally, you just can't keep doing covers or mash-ups. It would get old pretty fast.

If you're not changing what you're doing and exploring different parts of your musical output, I think you're slowly dying.

I think in my late 20s, I was starting to enter that realm of complacency, which is the most terrifying place I can imagine as an artist. I felt time creeping up on me.

Concert pianists are really afraid to try out the Beethoven Fourth Concerto if the Third happens to be their specialty. That's the piece they had such success with on Long Island, by George, and it will surely bring them success in Connecticut. So first there's tremendous conservatism. And then stagnation sets in. Or it certainly did in me.

You can't get tied into your past. It's not fun for me. You can't just keep doing the same material forever. Some people just play the hits, and it's the same show every night. They're happy to do that. I personally am not.

The idea for each of the stories in this book came in a moment of belief and was written in a burst of faith, happiness, and optimism. Those positive feelings have their dark analogues, however, and the fear of failure is a long way from the worst of them. The worst - for me, at least - is the gnawing speculation that I may have already said everything that I have to say, and am now only listening to the steady quacking of my own voice because the silence when it stops is just too spooky.

Photography should be redefined. It's largely technical... Photography is just unbelievably limiting. I always think of David Bailey and all the fashion photographers - they overlap, you can't always tell who did it. I don't really even like photography all that much. I just think it's so overdone.

Opera needs a major makeover; the large opera houses are too in thrall to their conservative patrons.

I think there are unseen powers who don't want pop music to be anything other than glorified Madonnas.

People are very adamant about maintaining a certain sound or a certain era, like, "There were three years of rap that were great, so let's just keep doing that." The genre itself is just stuck in place. It's been treading water for a while.

As soon as they say I don't sound as good as my old stuff, I tell them, "I would never sound as good as I first sounded, because you guys didn't know who I was. Being that I'm in rotation, you guys are getting used to the sound, so now you expect another track and another track, but it never happens again, no matter how hard I try."

If you look back, you get stuck in a year. I've seen rappers and singers get stuck in 2002 or 2005, and they can't get out.

Not writing at all leads to nothing.

Fight the tendency to become complacent and do one kind of music - that is the death of a musician.

In every decade rock and roll starts to get very serious and navel gazing and kind of self serious and every once and a while it kind of needs a kick in the pants.

Madonna can still produce a catchy pop song, but she hasn't expanded her artistic vocabulary since the 1990s. Her concerts are glitzy extravaganzas of special effects overkill. She leaves little space in them for emotional depth or unscripted rapport with the audience.

I don't live in the past or focus on making new songs sound like my old stuff; it would be stupid, and I don't think anyone would like it.

I always try to be alert to the potential for repetition, for a decaying orbit with regard to my use of technique, etc.