Michael Gira Quotes
The sexuality of children - there's a lot friction there. That tension interests me a lot.
You make your work and you can't ask for approval when you're doing it. Otherwise, it's going to be untruthful in some way.
The goal is ecstasy, but I don't want to make some sort of saccharine pop music. I want to make something that's completely uncompromising: the best possible music ever made.
The music takes you. It has to be alive. It's like you hammer something, and the way it happens to bleed leads you into new directions.
I like loud electric guitars because I like how you can just lose your entire being in the sound.
I'm the band leader. That's not to say that the other people are my minions - they all put in a tremendous amount of personality, and push the music in ways I would never expect.
Making those CDs, signing them, numbering them, packing them. It takes hundreds of hours, but it's worth it because I'm able to do the thing I love.
I'm pretty confident that people are going to come along for the ride. If they don't, tough.
I used to routinely break my ribs doing stupid things onstage, but I have a healthy fear of breaking my bones now.
Playing an old record doesn't interest me at all. It's exactly the opposite of what I want to do.
You find ways to push yourself into the sound through repetition. It doesn't stay the same. It morphs constantly.
I never wrote poetry, just prose. I don't really consider songwriting a form of poetry either. The words are important, of course, but they're dependent on the music.
I don't throw my body down on the stage at all anymore because I'm sure I'd snap like a twig.
As far as playing playing festivals and everything, I feel like that's what I was born to do. I'm an entertainer, hopefully in the best sense.
It wouldn't interest me to try to sound like Cop or something. It would be silly and soul-crushing.
Maybe in the future I'll put out someone's one-off project, but generally I don't have time.
I really wanted to get to the animal core of rock music and eliminate anything that wasn't necessary.
I have my own record company. I have to answer to God, basically. I'm not young, so I want to make the best possible work I can before I exit.
It was a kind of sado-masochism. I would take the things that were painful to me and elevate them and, through the mantra of music, make them into a release.
