I think it’s very dangerous as an artist to be comfortable.
MITSKIIn my first few years of being in New York, I had a major identity crisis because I’d never stayed in one place for so long.
More Mitski Quotes
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Then you start to realise, ‘Oh, I’m bending a lot,’ and they’re just standing there existing, and I’m bending around them. But you can’t blame them: they don’t realise it; that’s just how they already existed. It’s hard.
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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.
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When you love someone and care about them, you want what’s best for them, and it’s always the hardest thing to realize maybe you aren’t what’s best for them, how hard you try.
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When you’re young is the one time when you get to indulge in being morose and take yourself most seriously.
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The whole ‘grunge-girl’ comparisons certainly are the easiest to pick out, and I appreciate that music journalists are rushed.
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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.
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It’s nice to know there’s a big world with many perspectives. I tend to get so stuck in my own small world easily, and going out into the world reminds me that I’m not the center of the world – in a good way.
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I have this thing about being acknowledged and accepted by institutions.
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I try to be regimented and try to stay healthy and work out and eat properly and go to sleep. And not get too caught up in the industry in my regular life, so I can save all my expression and energy for my art.
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I don’t care about making anything new. I make music to express an emotion, and if the emotion is nostalgic, so be it.
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People started calling me that, and I started being treated in a specific way.
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I think people don’t realize how little of being an artist is making art.
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What I have a problem with is when it becomes another form of tokenization, of shrinking me into a symbol instead of a multilayered, female Asian artist.
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Often I’ve had problems automatically bending to a lover’s will, becoming what I know they want me to be. Immediately, I learn all the music they love, listen to it, study it, instead of being like, ‘This is what I love!’
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Pop artists work really hard, and they might not work for the same things that indie artists do, but they’re still musicians, and they’re still making art.
MITSKI