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I feel like, for me, reading Thomas Merton is like “Wait a minute, this is a rabbit hole. This isn’t a gateway or a ticket to anything except itself”. When you're a ways into it, you're five pages in, 20 pages in, 30 pages in, it seems like one of the more oxymoronic undertakings you could attempt.

Will Oldham

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Will Oldham
Age: 53
Born: 1970
Born: December 24
Actor
Guitarist
Musician
Singer
Singer-Songwriter
Songwriter
Television Actor
Louisville
Kentucky
Joseph Will Oldham
Bonnie Prince Billy
Bonnie Prince Billy
Way
Except
Undertakings
Like
Ways
Ticket
Five
Thomas
Reading
Hole
Seems
Attempt
Anything
Minute
Feel
Pages
Gateway
Feels
Wait
Rabbit

More quotes by Will Oldham

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It's nice to be able to backtrack and not be embarrassed by the music you used to listen to.
Will Oldham
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I think most great actors have their own life trajectory, the character motion doesn't have anything to do with their life motion.
Will Oldham
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I am thrilled at most corners that I turn walking down the street, I'm thrilled by most pages I turn when I'm reading a book thinking of what it's going to show and what it's going to make possible for tomorrow.
Will Oldham
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I felt so liberated when I first saw Charles Mee’s 'The Glory of the World' at BAM play, because for me this is the gateway to contemplation, or this is the gateway to love, or this is the gateway to faith, not sitting and reading a book by an isolated monk, god bless him. This is.
Will Oldham
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The less people present in an urgent situation that a moderately high stakes recording session can create - the less people there are in the room - the more openness there can be. These songs share that as well, in addition to just the obvious, basic starkness.
Will Oldham
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To me, the best purpose of an interview would be to illuminate some things about how somebody works for the benefit of somebody else who wants to do those things. And that's not where most interviews go at all, so to me, they seem like strange exercises in small talk and wasted air.
Will Oldham
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Too much emphasis is put on American roots music when people try and place me. You know, I grew up listening to punk.
Will Oldham
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When I listen to little fourth-dimension artifacts, they're like they were made as time capsules in the first place. You know that when you're writing the song and recording the song, you're already sending a message to the future listener, whoever and wherever and whenever that will be.
Will Oldham
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It's good when someone says, Would you write a song for this purpose, or would you record a song for this purpose, or would you help me realize this song, again, for this purpose.
Will Oldham
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I feel much more physically connected to my voice, and I like the physicality of the voice, and how the voice can physically occupy a song.
Will Oldham
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I don't like going to cities. I don't mind maybe being in a city sometimes for a few hours, but I pretty much don't like cities. I don't even like passing through them.
Will Oldham
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I'd like my records to reach as many people as possible, but I'm also thinking in terms of how I can keep from getting jaded or unhappy with the process.
Will Oldham
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I do not want a personal relationship with my fans. Or to do anything that encourages them to think they have one with me. They can have a personal relationship with my songs. That's fine, but they don't know me.
Will Oldham
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A vocal performance “Coming Together” is hard, but it's the kind of hard that if you work hard enough at it, you can do it and it feels great, because it was so hard. So we'll continue maybe even over the next couple of years to perform that and to expand our collaborative repertoire.
Will Oldham
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There's very little admirable about being a pirate. There's very little functional about a pirate. There's very little real about a pirate.
Will Oldham
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A record is something that isn't real or true. It's like cinema. It's a construction of something hyper-real and surreal and unreal all at the same time. You make a space that doesn't really exist. One of the big joys of being in this line of work is building the recorded versions of the songs.
Will Oldham
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I don't like the idea of being surrounded by hidden things people you can't see in buildings and cars.
Will Oldham
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With women, you always have to make an educated decision to figure out what they're thinking. It's not one that's necessarily sympathetic, always. Of course, we're all human beings, but the gender thing is big thing. And a great thing.
Will Oldham
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We always keep things very, very simple. We can make a respectable living playing a smaller room that somebody else couldn't, because they're spending a lot of money. If we can't get a show up and deliver with what we almost intrinsically have in our brains and our pockets, then I don't really want to do it.
Will Oldham
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One thing that the Internet has created is the sense that information is at your fingertips, when it's really only a very, very limited, specific, and slanted kind of information.
Will Oldham