Sean Stevens > Recent Status Updates

“Feeling distant was both lonely and comfortable.”

“Summer suits me because whatever will happen won’t linger. Once the creaking light and humid air clears, it all seems like a lie.”

“Passion is something that occurs naturally. Yet when the time comes, I make it occur artificially. That seems different to ordinary enthusiasm. Distorted. There’s something forced and unnatural about it. I can cool it down at will. For me there’s little distance between loving and hating someone.”

“In an incoherent, inconsistent world, some exorbitant happiness could always come along. I trembled at the premonition. I was in a world of man-made magic.”

“I couldn’t tell what pleasure was anymore. At first you get high to feel good or check out. Then, once you’re using it regularly, it stops feeling good. Your brain can’t check out, it doesn’t get you there. But you don’t learn, you keep taking it just to escape the withdrawal. To forget the chilling despair you feel when you sober up.”

“the same night will continue on.Today is just yesterday,continued. Tomorrow is just today, continued. Day breaks, night falls, day breaks. Night probably falls again.The little details differ, sure.But for the most part, everything is pretty much the same, and I feel neither more nor less sluggish today than I did last Thursday.I am sluggish But still compelled to dance. Provided there’s some variety to the music”

"When your world breaks, your self also breaks. But for me, the world’s always been broken. It’s all chaotic, out of my control. I’m sure that’s why I try to sort and organise it so much. I want to have it all contained in the palm of my hand."

“He came out of nothingness, took form, was loved, was always bound to return to nothingness.”

“Only then (nearly out the door, so to speak) did I realize how unspeakably beautiful all of this was, how precisely engineered for our pleasure, and saw that I was on the brink of squandering a wondrous gift, the gift of being allowed, every day, to wander this vast sensual paradise, this grand marketplace lovingly stocked with every sublime thing.”

“Everything was real; inconceivably real, infinitely dear. These and all things started as nothing, latent within a vast energy-broth, but then we named them, and loved them, and, in this way, brought them forth. And now we must lose them.”

“I was in error when I saw him as fixed and stable and thought I would have him forever. He was never fixed, nor stable, but always just a passing, temporary energy-burst.”

“No one who has ever done anything worth doing has gone uncriticized.”

“Everything was real; inconceivably real, infinitely dear. These and all things started as nothing, latent within a vast energy-broth, but then we named them, and loved them, and, in this way, brought them forth. And now we must lose them.”

"Goodness, are you a child! He is, isn't he? "

"He’s peeled me like an onion. Surrounded by the leavings of my own sallow skin, I’ve dwindled to nothing, and my eyes smart."

“In musical performances one can sense that the person on stage is having a good time even if they're singing a song about breaking up or being in a bad way.For an actor this would be anathema it would destroy the illusion but with singing one can have it both ways. As a singer you can be transparent and reveal yourself on stage, in that moment, and at the same time be the person whose story is being told in the song

“Does asking oneself these questions in an attempt to see how the machine works spoil the enjoyment? It hasn’t for me. Music isn’t fragile. Knowing how the body works doesn’t take away from the pleasure of living.”

“Music can get us through difficult patches in our lives by changing not only how we feel about ourselves, but also how we feel about everything outside ourselves.”

“What begins as a random walk often ends up taking you somewhere, somewhere that you later realise was exactly where you wanted to go.”

“The classical players who think all popular music is simple tend not to hear the nuances involved, so naturally they can’t play very well in that style. Simplicity is a kind of transparency in which subtle nuances can have outsize effects. When everything is visible and appears to be dumb, that’s when the details take on larger meanings.”

“I wanted to find a reason not to be cynical—to have some faith even when nothing around me seemed to justify it.”

“There are two conversations going on at the same time: the story and a conversation about how the story is being told.”

“The online music magazine Pitchfork once wrote that I would collaborate with anyone for a bag of Doritos.”

“My favorite term for a new kind of performance is "security theater." In this genre, we watch as ritualized inspections and patdowns create the illusion of security. It's a form that has become common since 9/11, and even the government agencies that participate in this activity acknowledge,off the record, that it is indeed a species of theater.”

“The mixtapes we made for ourselves were musical mirrors. The sadness, anger, or frustration you might be feeling at a given time could be encapsulated in the song selection. You made mixtapes that corresponded to emotional states, and they'd be avaliable to pop into the deck when each feeling needed reinforcing or soothing. The mixtape was your friend, your psychiatrist, and your solace.”

“Music resonates in so many parts of the brain that we can’t conceive of it being an isolated thing. It’s whom you were with, how old you were, and what was happening that day.”

“As music becomes less of a thing--a cylinder, a cassette, a disc--and more ephemeral, perhaps we will begin to assign an increasing value to live performances again.”

“It can often seem that those in power don't want us to enjoy making things for ourselves - they'd prefer to establish a cultural hierarchy that devalues our amateur efforts and encourages consumption rather than creation.”

“I like a good story and I also like staring at the sea-- do I have to choose between the two?”

“And whatever she suffered, he will suffer so much worse, so much worse. However loudly she cried, and begged him to stop, her murderer will cry out more loudly.”