Whenever I’ve tried to ingratiate myself to an existing community, I tend to give too much, to become whatever it is they want me to be. It’s something I do automatically – I’ve learnt to immediately adapt.
MITSKII discovered I was an Asian American when I arrived in the U.S. I didn’t identify as that before I came here.
More Mitski Quotes
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I could never enter that dream. That all-American white culture is something that is inherited instead of attained.
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I hope to be a writer and musician my whole life, fingers crossed.
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If I have a song where I hit some really high notes, I want to try to bring in equivalently low notes somewhere in there.
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I think my real influences are out of my control, which are the things that entered my brain when I was a kid growing up.
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I understand that, because there are so many musicians, you have to make artists into brands, but I sometimes feel like I have to be some kind of non-human icon in order for people to listen to my music.
MITSKI -
What’s important to me is that my songs can exist without any material anything. It’s very reflective of my ideology.
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I think it’s very dangerous as an artist to be comfortable.
MITSKI -
I’m so smart. I am good at doing math really quickly in my head.
MITSKI -
I think music is supposed to be shared.
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I didn’t fit in anywhere when I grew up, but I was always American, so to survive,
MITSKI -
I don’t want to be a musician’s musician. I want to be an everyone’s musician.
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I think my whole identity is formed around not knowing where I’m from. It might even be that I find comfort in that confusion.
MITSKI -
As a woman of color, I always have to be at 150 percent and better than everybody in the room to be considered competent.
MITSKI -
I wanted to take up guitar because playing piano is a little harder. Carrying a keyboard around is harder, and finding a real piano is much harder, and I wanted to play live more, so I figured a guitar would be easier to carry around.
MITSKI -
Sometimes when I perform, and it’s obvious the audience is just there to party, or if I feel a wall between me and the audience, I get existential about it.
MITSKI