Thursday, November 23
Before I met you I was a bum, I was a drunk. I was a drunk with a pad. I was W.C. Fields without a nose, I was Dean Martin without any charm. I was no good, really. I thought that small talk was too small, I thought that big talk was too pretentious, I thought music was noise and I thought art was bullshit. That's what I thought.
I know you're no good, Virginia. You're just a girl, two legs. I know that. But I love you. You see, I'm not too secure, I'm step by step. But I know you, you see. I know you because I look at you while you sleep. Did you know you sleep with half your eyes open, did you know that?
Friday, November 17
People will often ask me, "what’s your band’s politics? What’s your politics on this? What’s your politics on that?" And I tell them that one of the main things for me, and for the rest of the band, is that the whole place has already burnt down. That everything went wrong in Rome. I don’t know who was trying to put a Band-Aid on a sinking ship. The idea of trying to fix things and like, what’s really to blame is the written language. That’s where everything started going bad.
I think one of things we've always struggled with is trying to figure out how you get the energy of being live, 'cause obviously a tape recording of a live show doesn't convey that at all — at least, not to us. Maybe it does one time when you listen to it, but then after you listen to it once it's gone. Obviously, live, we're really interested in spontaneity and improvising. And one of our big things is, how can you record in a way that, when you've got this thing that's never gonna change, but you can still feel like it changes?
— Tim Harrington
The positive thing about this album, I don’t know what songs, but maybe a song or two on there might (show) a little hope for us to change shit. Other than, it’s pretty bleak if we keep goin’ on this route. I’m telling people that it’s not society imitating the artist, it’s the artist imitating society. People still think that it’s up to us! It’s up to you to stop this shit! "If you stopped singing about it, muthafuckas would stop doing it." Yeah, right. Okay.
— Schoolly D
Wednesday, November 15
Em arte, só quem rompe um código se conforma ao código da modernidade. Ocorre que todos agora nos queremos modernos, e que, no fundo, ninguém mais se apega a código nenhum. Segue-se que a situação da vanguarda fica muito facilitada, ao mesmo tempo que se complica. É claro que não é o caso de voltar atrás, o que aliás nem seria possível, pois o tradicionalismo técnico já não se encontra e não é mais um adversário de primeira linha. Sua existência é um resíduo provinciano, e dia a dia está mais evidente o parentesco, e não o antagonismo, entre a inovação pela inovação e o movimento geral da sociedade. Basta pensar na produção pela produção, na revolução tecnológica e científica, e na vocação modernista da publicidade. Noutras palavras, quando se confina à dimensão técnica, o radicalismo experimental é hoje uma atitude benquista e alienada como outras. À semelhança do que se passa no campo das forças produtivas, o progresso técnico em estética chegou a um impasse. Assim, talvez o rigor agora não esteja na destruição (redundante) de linguagens que já não resistem, mas na capacidade de tirar um partido vivo, tão a par das coisas e sem prevenção quanto possível, desta terra de ninguém que é o nosso hábitat atual.
— Roberto Schwarz
