The Talks
Bryan Adams: “It’s like mining for diamonds”
Mr. Adams, is rock music dead?
I said that once as a joke, but these days rock music is as big as ever in concert, so in some ways it is doing just fine. It doesn’t get played on the radio like it used to, and the youngsters don’t have the kinds of guitar heroes I had growing up, so as result kids aren’t going for guitars like they used to. Computers changed rock. To be a musician nowadays, you don’t need to play an instrument like you used to, and the same goes for singers. Everything is either already in the computer, or the signal gets processed through a computer. We’ve changed how we make everything.
How about your love of or hope for rock — has that changed too?
I love making music, that’s never changed. My former manager called me one day to ask me what I was doing and I said I was writing songs, to which he replied, “Why bother? No one cares about new music.” I don’t believe that! I don’t despair over the future of rock, because like I said, in some ways it’s better than ever and the gigs are so great. Kids find the songs through the Internet, whereas I remember driving around with my mother listening to AM radio and The Beatles. Of course that opened the door to pretty much all of the seventies rock artists, some I was lucky to see live like Led Zeppelin and T.Rex, and others I got to tour with, like Bowie and Tina Turner...
“It’s a huge peace to allow yourself to be vulnerable. You gain a sense of freedom and understanding and forgiveness for being human. Instead of trying to control things and make it the way you want them, you have to be more open.”
“Risks are very important to me. It’s the only thing that will define the next career move or else I’ll be plateauing. I’ll be completely stale if I don’t take risks. And that’s not just my career.”
“Each of my projects is kind of a marathon run. A lot of them won't make it to the finish line and the only reason they make it is because I go back and nurture them and try to figure everything out.”
“Life is confounding and who knows what’s around the next corner. But in many ways uncertainty can be exhilarating—there’s a lot of freedom in it. It would be a shame to waste our snippet of time on this planet being afraid.”
“You better make every moment count. Live your life now; start in the morning. You mustn’t sit around waiting to die.”
“I don’t want to be good. I want to be the best. Even in failing that, you’ll hit a higher mark than if you never tried.”
“Life is struggle. Life is about struggle. You’re not supposed to be happy all the time. It’s about challenging yourself and pushing yourself, you know? You become content. That’s not happiness.”
“Just about anything is possible if you can find the map or the blueprint to get there. I think you’re only limited by your imagination.”
“When I was training as a ballet dancer, I know that I was often tired or in pain, but you just work through it. You go home crying and your parents almost want you to quit but then you just do it. And I use that stamina now as an actress because it’s normally quite uncomfortable to make films.”
“Being creative and keeping your brain occupied is very sensible because if you don’t you die, slowly. Sometimes I feel tired and think I ought to give it up, I don’t want to just retire. I enjoy it all.”
“One of the things that I’m striving for is an authenticity, to do things which feel natural and make choices which feel authentic and real. I think in a way you sort of can’t help sounding like yourself. You can’t help but put yourself into your work.”
“Everyone’s life comes to an end. We’re all going to come to the same fate. So you just keep going while you can, doing what you like.”
“The journey of an artist is a journey of discovery and some engagement with the nature of material, with bodily things and all that has led me to this place. I’m really interested in that as a process because the process moves you in directions that you couldn’t rationally put there.”
“I just want to do everything as good as I possibly can but it is also good to act on an idea and fail — and then you get something out of it. I think it’s really important to not be afraid of failure and to push yourself to try things and jump in the cold water.”
“I have an irrational fear of boredom. That’s why I now have this tattoo that says “Carpe Diem.” That’s what we should live by!”
“I just keep imagining myself thirty years from now thinking, ‘Why didn’t you take advantage of all the opportunities you had? Look at all the people you could have worked with, the roles you could have done. Go for it.’ And that’s what I am thinking.”
“I try not to look back. I’m looking forward. I’m worried more about what I’m going to do next week than I am what I did last week. There are too many things to do. Looking back is for everybody else.”
“My work is integrated completely into my life and vice-versa – I’ve been working since I was sixteen and my work is my life and my life is my work. It made me who I am.”
“Architecture is the oddest profession. In the beginning you're very much involved in finding your voice and locating yourself artistically. For 25 years you're working with small projects, domestic projects. And then you mature at 50 and you're given your first projects.”
“If I knew that tomorrow a meteorite would destroy our planet, I would start shooting a new film today.”
“I never thought of art as a career. I thought it was more like a monastic practice. It 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. Obviously I’m not perfect but the thing I am best at is painting.”
“I think the best you can do for yourself is let your subconscious drive you, instead of doing things because you want to achieve some sort of glory.”
“I think the final circle in being an artist is connecting, making some conversation to the world you’re in. I think if you have that feeling of why you need to do something, you’ll find a way. And I think that really takes you forward! If you’re feeling that, maybe other people need that to.”
“I think that when you’re a creator, you set out to create the perfect thing, but the idea of reaching that kind of creative nirvana — that’s something that you should never quite reach.”
“I have a tattoo that goes around my right wrist that looks like barbed wire, but it’s actually ANDAND linked together, which stands for “A New Dawn, A New Day.” It’s about waking up every day knowing that you have a chance to start again and forgive and be forgiven and to let go of yesterday.”
“At what point do you feel you’ve achieved it and you can move on? I think you usually have to start thinking, ‘So what’s next?’”
“We're not having to run from predatory animals like we did for hundreds of thousands of years before. So now we have to make up new activities to fulfill those emotional needs. There is a certain something about the ever-present danger of death that makes living so great.”
“I was always trying to innovate; I don’t like repetition. Time is something that changes every moment, it’s never repetitive — I try to follow this example.”
“To be an artist, you must start with a considerable drive; in my case it was a fierce madness, a wildness. I think that’s the mark of an artist, actually, that they are rebellious, unruly… And I was one of them myself.”
“I think when you’re an artist who’s been around for a while like I have you understand that it’s almost impossible to make work that is unanimously loved or understood! You can’t please everyone, and that is a great realization.”
“I have to free myself from my creation, I have to send it off, I have to give it up. And that is also the beauty, that you pass on something, that you let something live, that you allow it to confront. To get in contact with others.”
“You can work hard at this skill forever, you never reach the end; you never are a master, you’re never done. Writing is endless and I like that. I like that you can never conquer it.”
“The recognition of luck is extraordinarily important — as well as making the best of it and creating to the best of your capabilities on that one opportunity you’re given so that it doesn’t end up in the museum of errors.”
“I wouldn’t ever compromise on the essential, on the essence of a project, the ideas or the themes.”
“I’ve been through some incredibly tough times in my career but I persevered and came out the other side. And that teaches you strength, how to handle being put under pressure. Experience is a big thing — just knowing that you can pull yourself back up again.”
“My whole purpose in life is to communicate what I’m doing. I see myself as a modern nomad and a soldier at the same time. Being mainstream won’t change me because once I have something to perform, a task, then I’m a soldier. And I’ve always been a soldier.”
“I would say that a strong work ethic is a vital ingredient for success. That’s something I was born with, I’m convinced of it; it was nothing that I acquired. If you take on anything, you try to do it your best.”
“I really lacked confidence at the very beginning. At first I was quite intimidated! I wasn’t accepted in the kitchen initially, I wasn’t part of the system; the other chefs didn’t welcome me. But in the end, those experiences made all the difference. It freed me.”
“When you are at a crossroads, mistakes can help you decide the right way forward, and I think I really grew when I understood that I need to accept my mistakes.”
“I act on intuition. I just let my intuition go in situations of fear. I live from my heart. I will continue doing things the way I have done them my whole life. And it gave me mostly a great time.”
Pelle Cass: “I never fabricate”
Mr. Cass, your unique style of time-lapse photography results in exciting, lively, and busy tableaus. Is the photo-taking process equally as exciting?
No, in general, my photo-taking process is very boring. I'm just standing there. Even my recent New York Magazine shoot was boring in its own way, because I was standing up on the roof of a building, above everybody with just a couple people helping me! The most interesting thing I do in a day is really what I get out through photoshopping, when I take all the images I’ve shot and superimpose them to create one photo. When it starts to come together as something, that’s when it gets interesting. My photos honestly look like garbage at first — like most projects when you start them, they aren't anything. It's terrible. And then all of a sudden, it starts to gel. And that's always the most important and interesting part of my day.
That particular shoot was certainly more structured than the street photography you’re known for, where you photograph everyday people walking across the frame and then photoshop them together to make one photo.
Oh, yes. I've come to think of what happens out in front of the camera as a kind of drawing, things are moving in the space and I'm recording these shapes that people are making. Lately I've also been doing shoots with objects or balls that I toss, and it really feels like I'm letting the objects draw in space! In the case of the New York Magazine cover, we had 72 famous people coming in to do the shoot, so there was a lot of scheduling, but that was handled by the magazine’s team. They also choreographed a few paths that they could walk. It was interesting to have that grid set out because if it had been up to me, I would have just let people wander around.
Małgorzata Szumowska: “It’s so unpredictable”
Jennifer Lame: “I loved the puzzle of the process”
Bronwyn Katz: “How I can extend the object’s life?”
Lyn Paolo: “I love creating those worlds”
Simon de Pury: “Curiosity is my engine”
Mads Mikkelsen: “That’s how we defined it”
Ayesha Harruna Attah: “I’m in constant conversation”
Stephen Frears: “Failure is where you learn”
