Quote

At a certain age, children are total Id - they're anything but beautiful little flowers. That always interests me. The place where the ego and the superego start, and where guilt and socialization and morality takes place, the true root of it.

Michael Gira

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Michael Gira
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: February 19
Composer
Guitarist
Musician
Poet
Record Producer
Singer
Singer-Songwriter
Writer
LA
California
Michael Rolfe Gira
Always
Interest
Total
True
Guilt
Place
Interests
Beautiful
Morality
Superego
Certain
Flower
Socialization
Anything
Takes
Root
Little
Start
Ego
Children
Age
Flowers

More quotes by Michael Gira

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I used to routinely break my ribs doing stupid things onstage, but I have a healthy fear of breaking my bones now.
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The sexuality of children - there's a lot friction there. That tension interests me a lot.
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Maybe in the future I'll put out someone's one-off project, but generally I don't have time.
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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.
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I don't throw my body down on the stage at all anymore because I'm sure I'd snap like a twig.
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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.
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I could never release something on the label I didn't personally love. The label's really an extension of my own musical career, and I'm intensely involved with every aspect personally, so it'd be a betrayal to myself if I released something simply because I thought it would make money.
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I'm more interested in pulling out strands of joy from both myself and the audience. I'm not saying the music or songs are light, just that when they're performed with the correct commitment it's a source of real pleasure, for me anyway.
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Swans are majestic, beautiful looking creatures. With really ugly temperaments.
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Playing an old record doesn't interest me at all. It's exactly the opposite of what I want to do.
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Nina Simone was an entertainer. Bob Dylan was an entertainer. Anyone that can occupy a piece of music and make the air catch on fire at that moment is a true entertainer. That's how I view it. That's what I was meant to do. I love doing it. That's why I'm on earth.
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I'm pretty confident that people are going to come along for the ride. If they don't, tough.
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It's good that people come to the shows because there's nothing fashionable about Swans. Never has been, really. We've never been part of a scene. So the people that come are really there for the music. Fortunately, there's a lot of young people and a burgeoning female contingent, which is good as well.
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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.
Michael Gira
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When I walk around New York now, there are so many ghosts. I find it very uncomfortable. There were many hard years, and I never really achieved any kind of comfortable financial success, so I just associate it with struggle. When I had a chance to get out, I was elated.
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I went to art school and never thought I'd be a musician, but then punk rock came along in the late 70s and kind of ruined my life. So I quit art school to get involved in music and I've been doing it ever since.
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I wanted to challenge myself and move into something new. I felt that using the name Swans and the sonic attitude that that engenders was what I needed to move forward musically, and it's led to lots of new things.
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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.
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When I first started doing the quieter, more acoustic material in Swans, there was a lot of derision and outright hatred from the audience and press, just as in the early days of Swans when we were rejected outright because of the bludgeoning, single-minded violence of the music.
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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.
Michael Gira