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" My anxiety level of my own work and what I'm doing and focusing on my art and all of that stuff? That's fundamental. "
Sufjan Stevens
My Own
Anxiety
Art
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" I've been trying to challenge myself to be more explicit. I've always liked punk rock and Sonic Youth. I make that music privately, but I've never released it. "
Sufjan Stevens
Rock
Music
Myself
" It's hard to say if actual places really affect the way you write. "
Sufjan Stevens
Places
Hard
You
" I love anything by Tchaikovsky. He was the real pop star of his day. "
Sufjan Stevens
Anything
Day
Star
" In third grade, I had to an oral report on the state of Oregon. I brought up Big Foot sightings, and I remember there was an argument about whether or not Big Foot was valid history. Ever since then I've been thinking about how subjective history is. "
Sufjan Stevens
History
Argument
Remember
" It's traumatic to meditate on the availability of information through the Internet, or the way we perceive the world as a result. People don't experience things totally or viscerally anymore. It's all through representation, be it a record on YouTube or a post on a blog. "
Sufjan Stevens
Information
People
World
" I always hated 'O Holy Night.' It's so operatic and overwrought. "
Sufjan Stevens
Hated
Night
Always
" Morals, principles and laws are when faith is reduced to standards and those standards basically just bind us, and we become prejudicial, racist, self-serving when we're guided by these laws... When a developed country uses Christianity in its policies, in government, in maintaining corporate wealth, that's a bastardized rendering of a faith. "
Sufjan Stevens
Faith
Wealth
Government
" The World's Fair was the precursor to theme parks like Disneyworld, and the really sort of cheap, superficial promotional architecture that you see everywhere in the U.S. I think there's a danger when you start creating a civilisation that isn't meant to last. "
Sufjan Stevens
Architecture
You
World
" I still feel like I have a lot to learn in the realm of sound experimentation, and I think I would like things to get noisier and weirder and more distressed and more aggressive, but I don't know if that's something that would be suitable for public consumption. "
Sufjan Stevens
Feel
Learn
More
" Musicians are often asked to answer for an entire culture, or for an entire movement. It's a process of commodification. It becomes packaged and summarized in a word like 'emo' or 'grunge'... or 'folk music.' I think that's just language itself, trying to understand the mysteries of the world. "
Sufjan Stevens
Culture
Music
Language
" One of my strongest memories is my father playing bongos in the living room in Detroit listening to Motown radio. He was this skinny white bald guy, but he was really moved by blues and Motown and funk. "
Sufjan Stevens
Listening
Memories
Living
" I'm a very self-conscious person; I think we all are, but I'm especially not very comfortable in my body. I always feel really weird and awkward on the street or on the stage. It has nothing to do with circumstances; it's just an ongoing psychological state, like white noise. "
Sufjan Stevens
White
Think
Street
" Every time Jimmy Scott sings, it's the same but slightly different. I don't know how he does that or where he gets that from. I think it's instinct. Nothing he does is by chance; he's in complete control of what he's doing. He's just beautiful and unique. "
Sufjan Stevens
Control
Beautiful
Chance
" My only concern about art collaborations is that I never thought of myself as an Artist. My tax forms say Musician/Songwriter. "
Sufjan Stevens
Art
Thought
Say
" I think I get a lot of ideas from when I was a kid, listening to Casey Kasem's 'American Top 40.' "
Sufjan Stevens
Think
Listening
American
" Pop music is so structured, and I'm excited to try and challenge that in my own work. "
Sufjan Stevens
Try
Challenge
Music
" I feel like the Internet needs to be disarmed in some way. There needs to be a philosophical undermining of the Internet. We take it too seriously and too literally. For a reference we go to Wikipedia, which is full of inaccuracies and misinformation. It's kind of beautiful - it's all the product of imagination; it's not reality at all. "
Sufjan Stevens
Imagination
Reality
Feel
" I have a love/hate relationship with Amy Grant, but I do go back to her Christmas albums once in a while. They're dated and sentimental and the production is nearly unlistenable, but there's something about her vocal performance that just feels really true. I would take her Christmas albums over Mariah Carey's or Destiny's Child's any day. "
Sufjan Stevens
Child
Day
True
" I've read in a couple stories that I was raised Episcopalian, but that's not true. I think that's just people assuming things. In some ways, I wish I was raised Episcopalian. I was kind of raised hodgepodge. "
Sufjan Stevens
Kind
Think
True
" I come from a folk tradition where you just dance however you feel comfortable. "
Sufjan Stevens
You
Comfortable
Dance
" I wouldn't mind being popular in other ways, but not with music. "
Sufjan Stevens
Being
Ways
Popular
" Public school felt like prison - cinderblock walls, fluorescent lights, metal lockers. It was so sterile and unstimulating. "
Sufjan Stevens
School
Prison
Like
" I don't really have a domestic inclination. Even my apartment has a semblance of a storage facility. It's just stacks, there are no bookshelves, just books and piles of stamp collections and weird little sewing and knitting projects. "
Sufjan Stevens
Books
Weird
Storage
" My music is just about story telling. I don't have much to say, and I'm not trying to change anyone's mind. I'm just singing through conviction about what I love and what I care about, starting with the very small. "
Sufjan Stevens
Change
Love
Mind
" Audacity is central to everything I do. A lot of times I think my work is about just seeing if I can get away with it. "
Sufjan Stevens
Work
Seeing
Everything
" The best fiction is geared towards conflict. We learn most about our characters through tension, when they are put up against insurmountable obstacles. This is true in real life. "
Sufjan Stevens
Life
True
Conflict
" The spiritual ambiguity growing up made me really latch onto a faith - Protestantism - that was somewhat conventional. Everyone else was rebelling against traditions and institutions, whereas I was rebelling against the upheaval and uncertainty in my family. "
Sufjan Stevens
Family
Spiritual
Me
" I believe that music is a spiritual language. My everyday self is pretty mundane and boring, but when I'm making music it allows for me to communicate a kind of transcendence that I can't communicate otherwise. "
Sufjan Stevens
Music
Spiritual
Me
" I am not naturally inclined to history or geography - maybe that's why I like to sing about it, because it helps me remember. "
Sufjan Stevens
History
Remember
Geography
" I'm pretty involved in everything I do, which isn't always efficient and doesn't necessarily make for the more successful product. But I do feel that, in that sense, everything I do has a comprehensiveness to it. "
Sufjan Stevens
Feel
More
Product