The Talks
Jack Antonoff: “It’s a lived life together”
Jack, several years ago you were asked what the key is to success as a musician, and you answered that it involves finding the thing that brings you discomfort and sitting in it. What kind of discomfort is informing your work these days?
Well, to me, the core discomfort in my writing has always been reckoning with grief. What's so fascinating about grief is how it changes, and it changes through the lens of life that you're in. It changes. It goes on. Eventually you start reaching a point where the grief is not even with you every day, and it's almost more sad. That’s always been the driving force for me as a musician because when I really was growing as a writer, when I was young, that's when my sister got sick, and a few years later she died. That time period of my teenage years, that chunk which is obviously formative, that was the story… And a part of you freezes. The part of me that froze, I'm just trying so hard to drag into the present, it’s almost like there's like two of me, and I'm trying to join it as one person. So I would say that's the great discomfort.
And of course that kind of discomfort impacts every part of your life, not just your songwriting.
Right, how does that affect my relationships? How does that secondary me, that ghostliness affect my marriage, my family relationship, my friendships, my band, all of it. And so even a song like “dirty wedding dress,” from the new Bleachers album everyone for 10 minutes, which I think is pretty fun, even that is an expression of that discomfort because I’m saying that I don't want to be casually seen; it’s about the past and the future, and trying to push forward as hard as I can.
“The entire aim of my work is to elevate the human spirit.”
“I feel like the best art comes from a sense of necessity and urgency, like I can't help but talk about this.”
“Making a movie comes with a great deal of joy, an incredible amount of hard work and equal amounts of stress, pressure, fun, and anxiety. But ultimately it’s extremely rewarding! I have the best job in the world.”
“The first song that I wrote was the way of discovering if I could write a song. And after that one I knew that I understood the form. Everything after that became more personal.”
“It's important for a novelist to use the imagination like a musician, a composer or a painter would, in a kind of non-logical way. I think it’s very important for me to not just become a kind of intellectual writer.”
“There's going to be a moment where your work challenges you, where you’re at your limit… But if that deep love is really there, you're not going to abandon it. You are going to give your all to it!”
“After winning an Oscar, there’s an alertness to what you’re thinking or doing or saying. I feel like there’s an aliveness to the experience that wasn’t as attuned previously.”
“I do not consider architecture as art, nor do I consider architects to be artists. However, I do have a strong desire to improve the purity of my expression and put a strong message into my architecture so that I can call it art!”
“During my career I was blessed to be able to constantly be motivated and constantly be pushing myself, because otherwise I never would have achieved what I did.”
“I started a very nice career, became quite successful, and at age 40 I won this prize. But when I got that prize, I realized that I hadn’t yet found my own language of cooking. So I got on my knees and gathered all the tools from my childhood and started working very hard on that. And that’s how it started.”
“I discovered early on that I’m the kind of person that experiments and makes mistakes but then it’s all worth it because once in a blue moon it hits home.”
“I believe anyway that the prime-time for every work of art exists in the time in which it was done. After that it’s transformation, continuous transformation.”
“My work is integrated completely into my life and vice-versa – I’ve been working since I was 16. My work is my life and my life is my work. It made me who I am.”
“When I swing and miss with a movie or a play, it’s life or death for me. I feel I don’t have any value, that there is no reason someone would want to be friends with me, that kind of thing… I think that is something that’s not going to change, so I try to use it as motivation.”
“I think we've all lived through the pandemic and it has awakened in all of us a concept of time, and how fleeting our time is and can be... I want to apply my energy doing good and creating and hopefully not squandering that. That's what I live for.”
“If it sounds right, then I’m happy, no matter how I got there. I just want to make beautiful music.”
“Most people make art and movies as a job and if a lot of people go to see it they make money and that is their sign of success. I am not making judgment here, but their goal is strictly business-oriented. I don't do this as a business.”
“I knew what felt instinctively right for me, and I pursued that throughout my entire career. It’s the way I live; it’s the way I work. Everything that I’ve done and everything that I have is an extension of my personal taste.”
“I don’t want to continue to do what I did when I was 20. I would like to continue to develop myself .”
“You don’t think of your roles as achievements. You think of the roles you play, the paintings you’ve made. I mean, imagine an actor saying, “I don’t want to go on anymore because I can’t do better than the last movie I made. I might as well quit now.” We’d call that resting on your laurels.”
“You’ve got to actually write it. You’ve got to actually sit there and do it, it can’t just be about the experience. Lots of people have fantastic experiences in life, but don’t have any inclination to put pen to paper.”
“I think all the roles of my career have presented me with opportunities for my own personal growth. Roles that really push you out of your comfort zone, it really helps you to grow, and it then brings you greater capacity for love within yourself and love for others.”
“It’s everything you need, but nothing extra. It’s what's essential. It’s a minimum state which you achieve when you can't add or subtract… It’s sort of this perfect state, that’s what I'm looking for.”
“We are consumed with existence, mortgages, jobs, cars, houses. It is nice to allow the imagination room to breathe again and see life as something that is spectacular and magic.”
“Somehow at the end of the day doing something that actually resonates with people is quite rewarding and keeps me going.”
“I can’t make people happy if I’m not happy myself. That applies to anyone who tries to achieve something in their life: if you’re not happy, you can’t transfer any happiness”
“I feel quite free as an artist. I don't feel that I have to prove anything. It’s a liberating feeling. I can go in any directions, I can explore and embrace whatever I want.”
“I am not that interested at the moment to work for the sake of others, I’m not interested in doing commissions. I'm way more interested in creating art for art's sake and in order to do that I have to believe in myself.”
“when we finally put a piece together for the first time, seeing it all together, when it actually works… The excitement in the room is something I’ll never forget. It feels like a very powerful moment to be part of.”
“Art is about finding creativity in the normal gutter next to you. To see the potential in something where there is no potential in terms of how society sees it is often where art or creativity is a great tool. It’s about making the impossible possible.”- “You can’t measure something like who is the best chef in the world. Whether I’m the best or not, no one can really say. However, my restaurant elBulli was certainly the most influential restaurant in the world.”
“I think that one should make a house that really fits you like your second soul. It should be your most preferred place on earth!”
“We’re going after it. We’re going after what we believe and what we deserve and we’re not taking the back seat anymore. I see an improvement in the way that we as women are standing together and paving the way for the next generations. It’s time for that.”- “Art is something that you do – you can't not do it. If I made money doing it, I would do it; if I didn't make any money, I would do it.”
“I’ve been very fortunate, and I don’t know why, but my shoes don’t have a special time period. I don’t design them with that in mind but it happens: timelessness. I have been absolutely gifted by that.”
“When you are in a very, very tough moment of a day and have a lot of frustration because nothing is happening right—but you don’t give up—and suddenly that happens! That’s almost a transcendental thing.”
“You better make every moment count. Live your life now; start in the morning. You mustn’t sit around waiting to die.”
“Happiness for me is just being; just being at any given moment. If you are searching for happiness, you are not happy. It’s the pot at the end of the rainbow.”
“I’m using my skills to create architecture that serves humanity. I’m talking about creating space for you so that you can feel comfortable, space that supports your work and activity.”
“You can catch ideas at a deeper level when you start meditating. Intuition grows, and intuition is the number one tool for an artist – feeling and thinking combined. The ideas are flowing, and the feeling that you can get it to feel correct. You know what that is. It’s a knowingness that grows. It’s really beautiful.”
Jeremy Chan: “It feels very free”
Mr. Chan, as a chef and co-owner of the two Michelin star restaurant Ikoyi, when did you first fall in love with spice?
I think my first memory of spice is when my dad would make wontons or noodles for us as kids, and when we'd eat them as a family, he would always have a very intense chili oil seasoning in his broth. I would only put a pinprick of it on my chopstick, but I remember tasting his broth after he'd finished his noodles, and I would think, “This is the level of spice that I need to get to.” Even though it was too spicy for me at the time, I remember the intensity of the flavor, the saltiness, the sweetness, the depth of flavor…
So you really grew up being open to spice and heat, exploring its different flavor profiles, its mouthfeel, the different dimensions that it can take.
Absolutely, my parents have been always very open minded, they’ve always exposed me to different cuisines, different tastes… So I grew willing to try things, I approached spice with this worldview. I had an exploratory mind when it came to food. And then in college, I had a very close friend who was from Sichuan and I would go to his house and have hot pot with his parents. And that really blew my mind! I remember it was summertime, it was humid, and we were eating this crazy spicy broth with shrimp, tripe, beef, mushrooms and vegetables. But it felt cleansing! This heightened, intense, almost painful spice experience with these fresh vegetables… I couldn't stop eating, even though the spice was causing me pain, it was burning in my mouth and I was sweating from the humidity. I felt cleansed. I felt like I'd had been through some kind of Ayahuasca experience. It was very mind awakening. That was a very important moment for me, because it really impacted how I cook and how I view the pleasure and deliciousness of eating.
Joanna Van Son: “Painting became my anchor”
Thomas Houseago: “There’s a form of survival in that”
Inez & Vinoodh: “What is reality?”
Autumn Durald Arkapaw: “It’s an out of body experience”
Joachim Trier: “I’m going for it”
Jessie Buckley: “There’s nothing I let go of”
Paul Thomas Anderson: “We continue to move forward”
Adolpho Veloso: “It puts you in a different state”
