Ezra Furman Quotes
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We music fans go to shows for transcendence; it's like being called to prayer.
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Just being gender non-conforming opens you to trouble from strangers. And violence.
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We need a lot more visibility of queer people in public life. People gotta get used to it.
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My Jewishness and queerness are very interwoven, and, although they sometimes conflict culturally, intellectually and spiritually they deepen one another for me.
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I always felt like I had a punk album waiting to be made.
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I think I gravitate towards rock 'n' roll as a playground where I can say anything.
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I feel like my consignment and fear from people pushed me to become a performer.
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I don't think I'll ever be able to fully explain the way that the Velvet Underground's records opened a door in my head. But it has something to do with Lou Reed as a mythic figure: a person who fitted no category, who defied limits and trends and definitions.
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I don't really worship the album 'Transformer.' It's not the best thing that Lou Reed has done.
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My bassist Jorgen Jorgensen opened up my life to a lot of great, obscure old soul records.
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Sometimes there's a day where I don't feel good being out in the world, and I feel unsafe in the world in general. And an anxiety about just showing up in the world. It's kind of irrational, but people do say things to me out in the street about how I'm dressed.
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We punk fans have so much energy to give to the fight against injustice, i.e. the abuse of the poor by the rich, i.e. climate change.
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My main theme as a songwriter seems to be a feeling of homelessness, of being in motion. The feeling of being somehow unmoored, a radical internal freedom that is very painful and also joyful.
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My two most fervent interests are pop music and traditional Judaism. Hell of a pair of fervent interests.
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What really is wild about rock 'n' roll? Nothing. It's so banal and so part of corporate culture. It threatens to lose all its life.
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My favourite artists are the ones who are human, and you know they're not in a failure-proof environment.
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I've always been drawn to ambiguity in pop music.
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I'm an amateur at music and an amateur at most things. I like the idea of offering some music and some records and a website to people who feel perplexed.
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You have to be an anti-racist to not be racist. Because it's just a cultural tide that will pull you into it if you're not swimming against it.
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I guess I just do being a man different than some.
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I was a suburban kid who fancied myself somehow intellectual. I was into punk rock but I couldn't get into the subcultural signifiers of dyed hair, safety pins and torn denim. Being a punk seemed like a new set of rules that I wasn't interested in having to follow.
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I've been writing songs since I was a teenager, so one kind of song I've written a lot is about, I don't know, teen angst feelings - feeling unsure of yourself and immature.
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I like going to bed early and getting up early, but that doesn't happen on tour.
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I want to be a force that tries to revive the human spirit rather than crush it, to open possibilities rather than close them down. Sometimes a passionate negativity is the best way to do that.