♦︎ 05 «Quantity… not necessarily over quality, but first»
It’s very different than what I know of your work, which led me to wonder: what happened to you?
I started feeling like I am running out of time.
I think there are core themes that people try to express and explore. From my perspective, there are two separate tendencies: either you lock yourself into a formalistic structure and explore everything that it has to offer or there are people who explore these themes in divergent structures. Maybe it’s a question of personality.
I’d never thought of it that way. If I have to pick, I’d say I’d fit better within the latter group.
Now that you’ve had some time to process this project, how would you describe it?
I am still processing it, or, better, I’m avoiding doing it, so I don’t overthink it and I can actually keep going. Normally I’d say «Quality over quantity», but this time around it’s «Quantity… not necessarily over quality, but first». I need more pieces of the puzzle to make sense of it. I need to let something emerge before I can process it, no? It’s like when you’ve been making music mixes for long enough, you start to see your style emerge through them. I think I’ve talked about this before. I need to let this become something first. I don’t think it’s something yet.
Was that intentional or something you discovered through doing?
There you go. That’s kind of what I was trying to say: discovering through doing.
Do you write a lot?
Not a lot, certainly not enough.
There’s this James Baldwin quote where he says: “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive. Only if we face these open wounds in ourselves can we understand them in other people.”
I actually think about this quote often —the first half of it, to be precise; I had forgotten about the latter part— ever since I first read it somewhere some years ago. Whenever I feel restless because of some emotion I am going through, I find myself actively seeking a piece of literature, a piece of music, a piece of art that expresses what I am feeling and could offer me solace. But sometimes I don’t find it, and I wonder if I should attempt to write myself, and I wonder if that’s the very thing driving people to write…
How important is the notion of an audience in your process?
We are only somebody in relation to another. Things only exist in relation to each other. And this is all backed up by recent findings in quantum physics, by the way.
Are you still doing club nights?
I should probably start a club night.
Reworked from Shane Anderson’s interview with James Blake in 032c, 2019. Questions adapted; responses my own.