This curse of always feeling I should be doing something new...

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This curse of always feeling I should be doing something new.


Instead of trying to do something new, why not do something old and just do it really well.


Then again: what is new, what is old?


When I was young I didn’t suspect, but now it seems increasingly clear: the idea that there’s something “new” is little more than a colonial construct. There was nothing there before so I make a “discovery.”


There was always something before. Everything comes from somewhere.


But, nonetheless, I want something, something that gives me this misguided feeling of escape.


I question it completely. Yet the questioning doesn’t replace the desire.


There might be nothing new, but there are certainly things that are new to me. And those things have their own specific histories, whether I know it or not.


Histories one can certainly learn. And pay tribute to. And question.


Reinventing the reinvention of the wheel.




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Mark White Quote: "We were just flailing around trying to find some form that would represent, or bear witness to disillusion."

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I suppose you could say the Mekons were a way of bringing Six Years: The dematerialization of the art object and The Whole Earth Catalog together… I think an awful lot of the flailing around we did [as art students] was a search for form: What form is our disillusionment going to take? Quite how we ended up in bands I’m not entirely sure… We were just flailing around trying to find some form that would represent, or bear witness to disillusion. Certainly this is what the Mekons were doing… We never had the confidence that what we had to say would make any difference… But we knew we had to say it.

– Mark White (as quoted in No Machos or Pop Stars: When the Leeds Art Experiment Went Punk by Gavin Butt)



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Paul Williams Quote

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I did things in my 30s that were ignored by the world, that could have been quickly labeled a failure. Here’s a classic example; in 1974 I did a movie called Phantom of the Paradise. Phantom of the Paradise, which was a huge flop in this country. There were only two cities in the world where it had any real success: Winnipeg, in Canada, and Paris, France. So, okay, let’s write it off as a failure. Maybe you could do that.

But all of the sudden, I’m in Mexico, and a 16-year-old boy comes up to me at a concert with an album - a Phantom of the Paradise soundtrack- and asks me to sign it. I sign it. Evidently I was nice to him and we had a nice little conversation. I don’t remember the moment, I remember signing the album (I don’t know if I think I remember or if I actually remember). But this little 14 or 16, whatever old this guy was… Well I know who the guy is now because I’m writing a musical based on Pan’s Labyrinth; it’s Guillermo del Toro.

The work that I’ve done with Daft Punk it’s totally related to them seeing Phantom of the Paradise 20 times and deciding they’re going to reach out to this 70-year-old songwriter to get involved in an album called Random Access Memories.

So, what is the lesson in that? The lesson for me is being very careful about what you label a failure in your life. Be careful about throwing something in the round file as garbage because you may find that it’s the headwaters of a relationship that you can’t even imagine it’s coming in your future.

- Paul Williams



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a question I've been asking myself a lot lately

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This is a question I've been asking myself a lot lately and I'm wondering if anyone else has an answer. What is PME-ART?


(I guess it's a little bit like that Supertramp song: "I know it sounds absurd / Please tell me who I am")



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