You either believe that people respond to authority, or that they respond to kindness and inclusion. I'm obviously in the latter camp. I think that people respond better to reward than punishment.
I think everyone's inherently snobbish. Things that are very popular are not taken seriously, because the snobbish side of one says, 'Well, if everyone likes it it can't be that good.' Whereas if only I and a couple of other people like it, then it must be really something special.
Once you've grown to accept something and it becomes part of the system you've inherited, you don't even notice it any longer.
I've got a feeling that music might not be the most interesting place to be in the world of things.
Most of those melodies are me trying to find out what notes fit, and then hitting ones that don't fit in a very interesting way.
It's insane that, since the Beatles and Dylan, it's assumed that all musicians should do everything themselves. It's that ridiculous, teenage idea that when Mick Jagger sings, he's telling you something about his own life. It's so arrogant to think that people would want to know about it anyway!
Something I've realized lately, to my shock, is that I am an optimist, in that I think humans are almost infinitely capable of self-change and self-modification, and that we really can build the future that we want if we're smart about it.
Our experience of any painting is always the latest line in a long conversation we've been having with painting. There's no way of looking at art as though you hadn't seen art before.
When you sing with a group of people, you learn how to subsume yourself into a group consciousness because a capella singing is all about the immersion of the self into the community. That's one of the great feelings - to stop being me for a little while and to become us. That way lies empathy, the great social virtue.
Musicians are there in front of you, and the spectators sense their tension, which is not the case when you're listening to a record. Your attention is more relaxed. The emotional aspect is more important in live music.
The point about melody and beat and lyric is that they exist to engage you in a very particular way. They want to occupy your attention.
For the world to be interesting, you have to be manipulating it all the time.
Lyrics are always misleading because they make people think that that's what the music is about.
Robert Fripp and I will be recording another LP very soon. It should be even more monotonous than the first one!
My shows are not narratives.
A way to make new music is to imagine looking back at the past from a future and imagine music that could have existed but didn't. Like East African free jazz, which as far as I know does not exist.
If I had a stock of fabulous sounds I would just always use them. I wouldn't bother to find new ones.
In my normal life I'm a very unadventurous person.
The whole history of pop music had rested on the first person singular, with occasional intrusions of the second person singular.
I'm very opinionated.
