Joanna Newsom

Musician

1982-01-18

Quotes by Joanna Newsom

I wasn't born of a whistle or milked from a thistle at twilightNo I was all horns and thorns sprung out fully formed, knock-kneed and upright.
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The thing that I was experiencing and dwelling on the entire time is that there are so many things that are not OK and that will never be OK again. But there's also so many things that are OK and good that sometimes it makes you crumple over with being alive. We are allowed such an insane depth of beauty and enjoyment in this lifetime. It's what my dad talks about sometimes. He says the only way that he knows there's a God is that there's so much gratuitous joy in this life. And that's his only proof. There's so many joys that do not assist in the propagation of the race or self-preservation. There's no point whatsoever. They are so excessively, mind-bogglingly joy-producing that they distract from the very functions that are supposed to promote human life. They can leave you stupefied, monastic, not productive in any way, shape or form. And those joys are there and they are unflagging and they are ever-growing. And still there are these things that you will never be able to feel OK about–unbearably awful, sad, ugly, unfair things.
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I wasn't born of a whistle or milked from a thistle at twilightNo I was all horns and thorns sprung out fully formed, knock-kneed and upright.
Read quote
The thing that I was experiencing and dwelling on the entire time is that there are so many things that are not OK and that will never be OK again. But there's also so many things that are OK and good that sometimes it makes you crumple over with being alive. We are allowed such an insane depth of beauty and enjoyment in this lifetime. It's what my dad talks about sometimes. He says the only way that he knows there's a God is that there's so much gratuitous joy in this life. And that's his only proof. There's so many joys that do not assist in the propagation of the race or self-preservation. There's no point whatsoever. They are so excessively, mind-bogglingly joy-producing that they distract from the very functions that are supposed to promote human life. They can leave you stupefied, monastic, not productive in any way, shape or form. And those joys are there and they are unflagging and they are ever-growing. And still there are these things that you will never be able to feel OK about–unbearably awful, sad, ugly, unfair things.
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It's valid that the Strokes and the Pleased have been influenced by some of the same bands. But it's invalid in the sense that we listen to the Strokes and try to sounds like them. I think that they are a good band.
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I definitely don't subscribe to the theory that more instruments, or more vocal tracks, harmony, or double tracking the voice, is a good thing. People do their early albums very stripped down, then each album becomes bloated.
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The very first Walnut Whales recording was recorded just a few weeks after I had started singing, out of the blue, started singing. And the voice, you can hear how uncomfortable I am with it, and how terrified I am with it.
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I am consciously not trying to bring in World Music elements. The ways that I work and feel are completely different in how they sound than someone playing the Kora in Africa would play it.
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