Glen Hansard Quotes
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I won't say I've closed the door on acting.
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A song is like a saddle: you ride it for a while, and if it's the right kind of song you can sing it for the rest of your life.
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I absolutely adore the alchemy of a bit of an idea.
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Well, everything about singing, I learned from busking. Everything I learned about songwriting, I learned from busking.
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I've realized, you know, having turned 40, that rest is just as important as work. In fact, it's equally as important.
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I busked from the age of 13 until I was 18.
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If you stand still in any city long enough, you see everyone pass you by. So you're in Chicago. If you stand on the corner of Belmont and Clark, and you do that for three years, you'll pretty much have seen everybody in Chicago pass that junction.
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I grew up wearing black arm-bands when the hunger strikers died. I went on those marches. I grew up basically a Provo, though I never obviously got into any activities. I was writing 'IRA, Brits out' on walls all over where I grew up, but that was a false sense of Irishness.
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There's this unspoken thing that you have to wear a tux and some kind of nice dress. There are all these ethical rules, but I'm sure if you came to the Oscars in ripped jeans and a t-shirt they wouldn't throw you out. You would just look like a fool.
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Sadness is a very interesting idea, this idea of sadness being some kind of default setting that artists will go into. And then I started thinking about this idea of sadness and happiness, and the idea that sadness is very loud, and happiness is quiet.
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I just didn't realize, being a young person, that if you sign up to make a film, a certain portion of your soul is forever gone. From there on, you are that character to everybody you'll ever meet again.
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I think ultimately, people are selfish in that department [blues], in a good way - the reason we're attracted to art is because it somehow reflects us. And I think, ultimately, we're a tribal people by nature. We're not individualistic. We almost like to hear that there's other people in a worse state than us. Sometimes even more than we like hearing there are people in better states than us.
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What happens to us all, I think, when we pick up a pen, is that we just become snobs.
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I think it's very interesting, people who can't stand people who whinge and whine. It seems almost like a class issue. Because you think about who is the most positive, who's the most redemptive songwriter that's ever existed in your lifetime?
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I think inside every rock journalist, there's somebody who wishes they had the courage to live the life that they're not, and that they're writing about. But at the same time, inside every songwriter, I guess there's a wish for happiness.
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And for some reason, when I'm sad, I do listen to Leonard Cohen, I do listen to Joni Mitchell. I do find myself going to the music that's actually reflecting my mood, as opposed to sticking on Motown, which might actually bring my mood up.
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I guess in a way I just feel blessed to be able to make music.
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My dad was quiet, angry, shut down. So my thing is: I express everything that's there. I want to get it all out.
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You know, albums are a funny thing. They're not like an intellectual decision. It's a collection of your kind of musings. Like it's a collection of your diary entries and you pick which one's gonna make the most sense together and you put out a record and you sort of live it.
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The moment of drifting into thought has been so clipped by modern technology. Our lives are filled with distraction with smartphones and all the rest. People are so locked into not being present.
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I love the idea of leaving some of the original abstract thought in, because the problem is that when you pick up a pen you become a snob, your own worse critic. You edit yourself in a way that is non-creative.
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I've always loved playing solo. I guess in a way I just feel blessed to be able to make music. My favorite thing is usually whatever I'm doing right there and then.
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I choose to believe that there is good in people and that everything is a lesson. Our place on Earth is to go deeper, to somehow get wiser. To have spirit.
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Keeping the pen out of your hand as much as possible is the best way to write a song, in my estimation. But the pen must come in to tighten it up.
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As a busker, one thing that does not work is self-consciousness. A busker needs to be working. A busker needs to shed all ego and get down to work. Play your songs, play them well, earn your money, and don't get in people's way.
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The muse holds no appointments. You can never call on it. I don't understand people who get up at 9 o'clock in the morning, put on the coffee and sit down to write.
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Our imagination just needs space. It's all it needs, that moment where you just sort of stare into the distance where your brain gets to sort of somehow rise up.
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There are people who can sit down and write a song about any given subject, and they can do it really, really well.
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Everything about singing, I learned from busking. Everything I learned about songwriting, I learned from busking. Busking, you learn people, you learn about reading people. You learn about reading the atmosphere of the street. If you stand still in any city long enough, you see everyone pass you by. It's almost like you get to know personality types, just by watching people walk past. You get a sense for things.
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In Irish law, busking is considered vagrancy - you can be arrested for it. It's risky asking people for money in public. So it's not like it's a high-art job. And people who do it as a high-art job make very little money.
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