Carrie Brownstein Quotes
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I would not call myself an optimist, even though I would aspire to be. I am innately a skeptic. There's kind of an incessant dissatisfaction that I have, that I'm always trying to either expose or fight against or wrestle with.
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[I hate] the ways that people want their special needs to be met, whether it's their food allergies or their special lotions or shoes. Or the ways that people want their neighborhoods and restaurants curated in a way that's really tailored to them. Growing up with someone who was living by these very strict, repressive rules for themselves - it made me very allergic to the idea of denial.
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I always felt that the most common thread in my life from when I was young until now has been a highly observant, very analytical mind.
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You can never underestimate that moment of somebody explaining your life to you, something you thought was inexplicable, through music. That was the way out of loneliness.
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With Sleater-Kinney, we did a lot of improvisation in our live shows, and even our process of songwriting involved bringing in disparate parts and putting them together to form something cohesive.
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I have to erase my Google search histories, because they always lead to an obituary.
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Even if, personally, I'm in a place of contentment or solidity, I feel like it's hard not to look out into American culture and see vast inequity, widespread institutionalized violence and racism and transphobia and environmental destruction. It's hard to be in this world and feel a sense of innate satisfaction at all. There's plenty of things to feel unsettled about.
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I think, for some artists, the fear of taking on a political identity stems from not wanting to be pigeonholed as political actor or a political musician. It becomes this thing where somehow your art can no longer exist on its own and be multifaceted.
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To be a fan is to be curious, and to be curious is to have openness... Part of being a fan is to allow 360 degrees of experience - to immerse without judgment. It's like a really fearless step forward into new experience. There's something that feels very timeless about fandom.
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You do have to live through things, and to live through things is to observe want, and to observe lacking. Even if the hunger is a curiosity.
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When I'm cynical, I seek out bands that are fully participating and trying to push something forward. Or I can just start playing music again - which is happening with a new project. But I think it's always a challenge to overcome cynicism and not get bogged down by a sense of nostalgia. That can be such a stifling feeling.
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There was a clarity to the Nineties. It was pre-9/11, before that anxiety kicked in that exists right now about the financial crisis or terrorism. We were all just going to move forward into the millennium and everything was always going to get better. Then, whoops, that didn't happen.
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If you always want to look relevant, just be CGI-prepared.
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I feel like I came in comedy's side door, and still feel very fraudulent in many ways.
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I wrote so much about fandom and participation for NPR that I eventually realized my most fertile way of participating in music is to actually play it, at least in a way that made the most sense to me.
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I really don't know what to do when my life is not chaotic.
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I think when you're writing from your own life, it's hard because you realize that people have their own assessment of how they look, and they don't know how you will describe them.
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I love coffee. I love a midday espresso on set, just for the energy.
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Wholeness is sort of a dubious concept. Because in terms of the human body and literal wholeness and structures, you think: "here are the structures that help make me whole." Family, or school, or the city I live in. When those structures are dysfunctional or decaying, you end up kind of Frankensteining pieces from everywhere in order to make yourself sated and comfortable and alive.
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To really be tortured by a song, it needs to be more than just something you don't like or don't get; it has to make your skin crawl by getting under it. Strangely, that last clause could describe provocative or daring music, as well.
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From a self-conscious standpoint, it's hard to see myself on a screen in a way that isn't just me playing music or doing something silly.
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You'd hope that no writing about music could supersede the music itself. But I do think that blogs mirror the way that we are listening. It comes at you fast and it's timely and then five minutes later we're on to something else. It caters to our desire for instant gratification. And I think blogs also have fluidity that's exciting. You have a lot of real enthusiastic music fans for the most part that are writing sometimes for a large audience, and I think certain blogs have a little too much power over what someone likes or doesn't like.
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To me, that ugliness, that grotesqueness - that's the essence [of life]. That's where you realize, it's not about all the consonance and the harmony. It's all the parts that are wrong that help explain why we're drawn to something - what the mystery is - just as much as the beautiful things.
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The internet is just a scary place. It's better to just go to the doctor. Don't let Google get inside your head. It will do bad things to you.