Michael Gira Quotes & Sayings

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

When my sister was released from the mental hospital, she came to live with me in the tilting and crumbling one-bedroom house I'd bought with the small amount of money I inherited when our parents died. She arrived one afternoon unannounced in a taxi. She must have known instinctively that I'd take her in. I don't know how or why they released her. Probably due to overcrowding, and they had her scratch her name on a form then pushed her out the door. Or maybe she just slipped away when no one was looking (who'd notice in a place like that?)
she never did tell me and I didn't ask her. I was so happy to have her with me again that the last thing I wanted to do was break the spell by letting reality intrude. Ever since they'd dragged her away weeping with laughter and reaching out for me with our parents' blood still coating her hands with shiny red gloves, I'd felt amputated, like they'd pulled her kicking and screaming and insane out of my guts. — Michael Gira

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. — Michael Gira

You find ways to push yourself into the sound through repetition. It doesn't stay the same. It morphs constantly. — Michael Gira

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. — Michael Gira

When I drink a Glass of water, it's thick and crawling with life. My mouth leads to the interior of my body - a caldron of disease, germs, and perversions of biology. I don't exist individually. I'm made of millions of living creatures, eating each other, decomposing, eating each other. — Michael Gira

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. — Michael Gira

I'm always trying to push myself into unfamiliar places with the music, sometimes without success, I have to admit. But I'd rather be there than relying on a style that people recognize and want to follow. — Michael Gira

Many of the songs were written as a way of paying tribute to specific people, but in the end the songs took on a life of their own and I didn't worry about accuracy or biographical truth, so it's not a problem. — Michael Gira

Playing an old record doesn't interest me at all. It's exactly the opposite of what I want to do. — Michael Gira

I'm just as comfortable performing solo with just my acoustic guitar and vocal as I am with a band. The main thing for me is that the performance remain rooted in the words and voice, that there be no place to hide. — Michael Gira

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. — Michael Gira

I really wanted to get to the animal core of rock music and eliminate anything that wasn't necessary. — Michael Gira

I got involved, for the most part, in the actual song construction, lyrics even. I didn't want to write the lyrics, but if there was a howler in there, I definitely pointed it out. Just trying to bring it up to a higher level. Of course, after a couple records, people get fed up with that. That's fine. — Michael Gira

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. — Michael Gira

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. — Michael Gira

I am definitely less and less interested in music made by people that exist today, people that are living. I just see them as part of the whole stupid process of the music business, desperate (even if they feign indifference) to get noticed, trying to "make it" in the stinking music business, to become "famous" etc, and it disgusts me. — Michael Gira

I like Sade. I'm re-reading Juliette. I skip the philosophy and read the salacious bits. His descriptive imagination is incredible. — Michael Gira

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. — Michael Gira

Maybe in the future I'll put out someone's one-off project, but generally I don't have time. — Michael Gira

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. — Michael Gira

I never could read Foucault. I find philosophy tedious. All of my knowledge comes from reading novels and some history. I read Being and Nothingness and realized that I remembered absolutely nothing when I finished it. I used to go to the library every day and read every day for eight hours. I'd dropped out of high school and had to teach myself. I read Sartre without any background. I just forced myself and I learned nothing. — Michael Gira

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. — Michael Gira

I'm a producer in the old-school way - not just some slacker working on Pro Tools. — Michael Gira

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. — Michael Gira

I don't throw my body down on the stage at all anymore because I'm sure I'd snap like a twig. — Michael Gira

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. — Michael Gira

Swans are majestic, beautiful looking creatures. With really ugly temperaments. — Michael Gira