Black Flag Quotes
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To combat the confusion and depression that assault me when I come off the road in the middle of a tour, I seek the most oblivionated music possible. When it's the 'way out there' that I seek, I go right to my stash of amazing music from Japan.
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You have to get away from them. You have to get as far away as you can otherwise they'll kill you with their lives. They don't know what they do. They are careless with themselves and they take too much for granted. They make their shortcomings your problem. The only way to keep your head above it and heal your wounds is to crawl away.
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What social media has done - Facebook, Twitter - is show the audience. I don't have an audience. When I make my work, it just goes out into the ether. I have a thick skin and it just brings me down to earth, you know, to realize how out-there and far away and paltry the audience is that gets what I'm saying. It's depressing if I let it get to me. And it's the same with hanging a show, the way it's put up, like, three stories high and you can't read a single word.
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I believe that capitalism, at least how it's used by major corporations, and environmental concerns are in opposition. To be ecologically aware, productivity of many things would slow down at least for awhile. Stockholders don't want to hear about the saving of the whales or some stream in Kentucky. They want a return on their investment.
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I don't try to be angry to prove something. I wouldn't try to intimidate you for any reason unless you were trying to intimidate me, and then I would show you that you can't do that to me.
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This sounds really corny, but I am a slave to my work, a workaholic, and glad of it. I like what I do; this is my place, my little universe, one of them.
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I've been in Iraq, and it never occurred to me to go, 'Hey, this war is bogus,' to some guy who's 24 hours a day trying not to get shot at or blown up.
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At times, I feel America is something that I can actually put my arms around, more than a land mass and a Constitution, something far more containable and understandable. I don't exactly know what it is, but at these times I feel completely woven into it.
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There's always going to be a need for activism; there's always going to be a need for you and me doing the right thing, being very Lincoln-sonian in looking out for each other.
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There are several books out on punk history, but I haven't read any of them. I was there.
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I want a soul mate who can sit me down, shut me up, tell me ten things I don't already know, and make me laugh. I don't care what you look like, just turn me on.
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I don't consider myself an actor, for me it's employment. Like the actor who's a waiter a lot, I'm an actor when I'm not on tour, in that that's a job I can do.
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Being in New York is an almost overwhelming experience. While Washington, D.C., is my favorite American city, I regard New York City as the most amazing city in the world. No other comes close. It is an incredible, inexhaustible engine.
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I always start tours with a great deal of anticipation.
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Sometimes I would get invited to a party or to go out to dinner by one of them and I would decline. Part of me wanted to go, but those kind of outings always made me feel even more alienated than usual. Hearing them talk made me feel lonely and hateful at the same time. Lonely because I didn't fit in, never did. When I was reminded, it hurt. And hateful because it reaffirmed what I already knew, that I was alone and on the outside.
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When Black Flag and DOA and all those bands were touring in the early 80s, it was kind of a forest and you just kind of got your way through it. Now it's like a six lane highway with Starbucks every twenty meters. That's just civilization.
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My main goal is to stay alive. To keep fooling myself into hanging around. To keep getting up every day. Right now I live without inspiration. I go day to day and do the work because it's all I know. I know that if I keep moving I stand a chance. I must keep myself going until I find a reason to live. I need one so bad. On the other hand maybe I don't. Maybe it's all bullshit. Nothing I knew from my old life can help me here. Most of the things that I believed turned out to be useless. Appendages from someone else's life.
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I like boring black and white films with subtitles. I'm basically a drip.
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Too sick and freaked out not to want a bullet for every passer by, too sick and freaked out to breathe, too sick and freaked out to care, too sick and freaked out to think of anything but the annihilation of my mind and denial of my life. So sick and freaked out that I think everyone is my friend.
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South Sudan is one of the most hard-put places in the world.
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I have a house, I try to spend as little time in it as possible. Not always easy on the mind and body, but it's how I got myself to 80-plus countries. This kind of routine forces one to reinvent and improvise. The older I get, the more important this is to me.
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I always try to individualize everything, every person. I see individuals and that's why I've never fallen for racism, or any type or classification of people.
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Of course same sex marriage is constitutional! The right to be yourself, to pursue life, liberty, and property, is protected several ways over several amendments. John Boehner should know this.
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Thank you for touching me. Some of the only moments worth living were spent with you. Not you especially, the collective you.
