Dan Mangan Quotes
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I think articulating things through song is a good way of letting people know that they're not alone.
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In the war between the humans and the robots, the humans had to win. Call me hopeful.
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You feel the weight of the world and you take things in and you are acting out from a place of being pushed and visceral. It's heavy. You can't be there all of the time.
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If you use language that divides people and makes people who agree with you really stoked and people who disagree with you disengaged then you're preaching to a choir, and you've lost any kind of relativity across the spectrum. So it's important to be subtle and understand that there's a lot more you can learn.
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I'll force myself to sit down and read a couple of chapters of a great book or I'll force myself to sit and listen to some amazing music or I'll go see a play. I find that watching or experiencing other forms of art gets my brain in action. It makes me feel connected to the creative energies and then that tends to get things going.
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The idea that things intrinsically were just better is so stupid to me because they never were. It's all relative.
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Acknowledging the lucky breaks are paramount to enjoying life. Not being defensive about our successes/failures. So, in short.
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I am trying to keep my voice in order. Basically not talking much in the van throughout the day to preserve it, which I'm sure is welcomed by the band.
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What frustrated us about the song [Robots] was not that it existed - we owe a lot to that song and have had a ton of fun playing it. The problem was that it was a "given".It was like everyone was waiting for it to happen, and then it better be as crazy as the time they saw it before. Started to feel like dancing monkeys.
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There's when a phrase circles in my head in a number of ways for any number of days, weeks, or months, and then that eventually becomes a song. There's a slow permeation of the idea and then that leads into a bunch of themes and becomes a bunch of lines.
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I don't necessarily think I look to books for ideas, but sometimes when I'm in the process of reading a great book, I just think about it all of the time.
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We talk about the past like it's the strangest dream. Then we repeat the things we never dreamed we'd do.
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There's going to be ups and downs and that you have to be okay with the downs too and embrace them just as much because they will teach you something.
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I think that's why art prevails: because it helps people in a fairly intangible, magical way feel more connected to each other.
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I think the only thing that we even have a small tangent of reality or truth about is right now - the moment that is happening right this second. Everything else is up for grabs.
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I don't believe in the myth of the "self made man". Nobody gets through alone.
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It doesn't matter if you're talking to a communist or a fascist if you say, do you want a good future for your kids? Well they're all going to say yes. Well do you think that money should be spent efficiently? Yes. Al of these things, everyone agrees on them but the way that we discuss them and the language that we use we hold different definitions for.
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The idea that things used to be better is fantasy. It's putting a halo on something that no one can disprove.
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When you have a young kid you can't go out much at night, so I spent a lot of time at home, watching movies and cooking dinner with my wife. It felt like what most people experience. White picket fence stuff.So there was some enjoyment of that normalcy, but I have to admit that part of me missed the chaos of touring. I think it's about balance.
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To say, "It used to be better," nobody can say, "Well, no it wasn't." It's like telling a story that is self-aggrandizing about someone who has passed away, when they can't tell the other side of the story.
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Sold my soul to the devil / for nice penmanship. / Now I write real pretty / but I'm starting to regret it.
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I used to be so young, how did I get so old?
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I was an English major in university and that got me into novels, but I read a lot of books as a kid.
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I remember somebody saying, "I feel really bad for kids growing up around iPads right now. It's just too complicated. Life's too complicated." I think, yeah, but I remember being a kid and holding up a new piece of technology that was made in the '80s and my grandparents going, "Oh, it's too complicated." It didn't seem complicated to me.
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I think the future and the past are equally hypothetical.
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Getting out on stage and playing music for people feels great when people are cheering for you, that's obviously really exciting. But what's most exciting is the idea that we're all experiencing something that's bigger than us.
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I had a rule that I would never force the muse in my younger days. I would follow the feeling. I would just put the pen down and walk away, and wait for it to come back. But these days, I have a kid, I tour a lot, and I'm always short on time.
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If you make everything really on the nose so everyone knows exactly what you're talking about, it's often not as strong.
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And sometimes you just have to trust that there will be more, sometimes you go through dry spells and you have to assure yourself "no no, it's gonna be fine. There's gonna be more songs, it's all good.
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We're constantly dealing with old problems under the circumstance of new variables, so just things like greed and fear and anger and inequality are issues that humanity has constantly dealt with. The parameters and the variables change but these are old things. And discussing those things is slightly more timeless rather than focusing on one tiny thing.
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