July 2012
37 posts
“The thing that transforms something from being an idea to being a physical reality is work,” Mr. Longstreth, 27, said when he sat down to an interview (between rehearsals for the tour). “You can have outlandish ideas, but if you don’t work at them, they just remain outlandish ideas. Anyone can have an idea. Work is transformative.”
—‘The Experimental, Led by the Obsessive’ (via howtowork)
“A consistent impression I had of watching Murphy and his band work was that, no matter what happened, Murphy rarely lost control, or believed his own press, or became entranced by the significant popularity that he had unexpectedly generated. Nothing was a big deal, except that it always was, insofar as everybody involved wanted things to go well because the project was a gorgeous lark that had become meaningful to people in a way that so many self-serious artists would kill for. An anti-star had become a star while managing not to romanticize a moment that was acutely personal for fans who wanted nothing more than that moment to continue. A perfect place to stop.”
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LCD Soundsystem’s Goodbye Film, “Shut Up and Play the Hits” : The New Yorker
This is about right. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some LCD Soundsystem, but I feel awkward when they’re placed on a pedestal as a “generation-defining band”. They just played some pop. For hipsters.
“
I know now that this was [Richard] Florida’s true genius: He took our anxiety about place and turned it into a product. He found a way to capitalize on our nagging sense that there is always somewhere out there more creative, more fun, more diverse, more gay, and just plain better than the one where we happen to be.
But I’ve been down that road, and I know where it goes. I know that it leads both everywhere and nowhere. I know you could go down it forever and never quite arrive. And I know now that it may be wiser to try to create the place you want to live, rather than to keep trying to find it.
” —from The Fall of the Creative Class