The Talks
Flying Lotus: “Music is a spiritual experience”
FlyLo, is it true that you like to think about your music as the soundtrack to a film that doesn’t exist?
Yeah, I’ve always loved building worlds and characters and all that stuff, I’ve always had a big imagination. And with electronic music or instrumental music, you have the luxury of not being told what the song is about, so you can just conjure up any visuals you like for it. That’s the beauty of it. So I’ve always seen my albums as an opportunity to make an audio movie. That's how I look at it. More often than not, I have some visual in my head when I'm working on music, and that gives me the opportunity to tie things together, it gives me a trajectory, it helps me figure out what the end is supposed to be.
So are you thinking about the concept first? Or does the concept only come to life once you’ve made the music?
I just like to mess around with music and have fun. That's how it starts, and then the messing around turns into a song, and then it keeps blossoming from there. I never know what I'm going to do, and I think if I ever do, it becomes contrived. I just like having fun and coming up with new ways to challenge myself in the studio, whether it be like learning new things to play, or how I'm going to record a thing… There’s always some kind of challenge. I just like playing around and finding out, “Oh, hey, this is what my inspiration was trying to show me the whole time.” I don't know what the music's going to sound like, but I have the way doing of it, the process. And getting into the process is the catalyst for something to happen.
“I try to look at things more from the perspective that everything is happening for us, not to us. And so whatever challenges that were occurring at the time, perhaps they were happening just so this moment could happen.”
“What I am looking for in this world is a sense of not feeling alone, and that’s one of the greatest gifts you can give to another person. I hope that my work does that. I hope that when people leave the theater they feel less alone.”
“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 think that one should make a house that really fits you like your second soul. It should be your most preferred place on earth!”
“Once I commit to an idea, then I just move forward with it, no matter what. And that's always how I've operated when it comes to my art. I'm kind of tenacious in that way, even if it takes a lifetime, eventually I will make that thing.”
“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.”
“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.”
“It was eye opening and an education really, a masterclass working with Martin Scorsese on Killers of the Flower Moon. That talent! Of course, you are in the presence of a master, working with him.”
“I want to be an authentic person. I start to feel that it’s a mission. I am not going to hold back on an opinion I have about something; I don’t know what the point of that would be.”
“The entire aim of my work is to elevate the human spirit.”
“People have said that before, “Oh, I'll read a recipe and know it's yours before I see your name on it.” That's the best compliment because I feel like working with food is such an extension of my personality.”
“I dreamed of winning the Olympics since I was nine years old. That was definitely the most memorable race of my career. But the next day I woke up, and I wanted to win the next race.”
“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.”
“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’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.”
“I want to make classical instruments sound unexpected. Constructing it yourself means that you don’t need to do so much so that it sounds like yours. You know it’s the only one. It’s yours. You own the sound.”
“My goal when I’m in front of an audience is to perform the piece and fill it with meaning. On stage, I concentrate on rationality and empathy, since the singer must feel a certain amount of emotion, but not too much.”
“One day, if you have a little bit of talent and a lot of hard work, you’re going to find out who you are.”
“You better make every moment count. Live your life now; start in the morning. You mustn’t sit around waiting to die.”
“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.”
“As a photographer, as long as I remain truthful with myself in the transaction, as long as I maintain a level of empathy for my humanity in that process, then what is being translated back is honest and the transaction is not objectified.”
“I’ve learned not to look at sales reports. I used to, but if I had listened to sales reports at the beginning, I would have given up on things that are some of our biggest successes now.”
“For me, success is having integrity and really staying true to my own voice. When I was younger, maybe it was more about the big spaces and getting awards. But now I’m prioritizing more this idea of having a beautiful process.”
“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.”
“When you keep yourself open, you just might get to know yourself and know the good things about yourself. And that's why I always come back to songwriting. It's the way I kind of try and make sense of my life.”
“Somehow at the end of the day doing something that actually resonates with people is quite rewarding and keeps me going.”
“I thought for a long time as the business grew, “Is this something I want to do for the rest of my life?” And I knew it was not. When I left Calvin Klein, I had done almost everything I wanted to do in terms of creation of products. And re-doing was less fun.”- “If it sounds right, then I’m happy, no matter how I got there. I just want to make beautiful music.”
“I think it’s just been a long slow burn. I’ve worked fairly consistently, and I’m really grateful — even for the years of not getting so many acting jobs because that means I really appreciate being able to do what I love now.”
“I would like to think that someday I will be content enough with myself and feel good enough about myself to think I don’t need to do all that sort of shit and I’ll just go and watch tomatoes grow or something.”
“I’ve learned that with time also comes pleasure: the pleasure of creating but also upholding the legacy that’s been passed down to me.”
“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.”
“In the moment when you’re designing a building, it’s the subject. One year later, when you just go back and see it, it’s the object. It becomes part of the city. It starts to sit where it should be sitting.”
“The guys who are real artists are people who have figured out the art of living; their art is art because they live. They have made living an art, they have made an art of living. They are constantly inputting life as opposed to expressing life.”
“I think a big part of writing comes out of an attempt to understand yourself. I just always felt whole when I was writing. I felt this kind of beautiful privacy that I never felt in any other way.”
“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!”
“To fight this game alone is actually every day a struggle. Sometimes you are not in the best shape. The biggest thing is that you must find in it a personal happiness.”
“If I should be fortunate enough to make another film, it would be exactly what I have settled upon as what is right for me. I feel that these days, I understand a little more what the cinema is.”
“Filmmaking is never anything less than a beautiful gift. I've been doing this forever, and as hard as it may be, it's never let me down. I have such a will to make these movies!”
“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.”
Fiona Crombie: “Every choice has meaning”
Ms. Crombie, as a film production designer, is it hard for you to say goodbye to the sets you’ve created at the end of a project?
I remember very distinctly walking out of my office at Shepperton Studios and seeing one of my sets for Cruella getting crushed into a skip, and I thought, “Oh, that’s a bit much!” (Laughs) But at the same time we do just kind of continue on because we have to. A lot of the times, I never see the sets come down anyway, because I’ve moved on to a different part of the film, so it's very much a sort of a normal part of the process that you say goodbye. The nice thing is that they're on film, and they live on in that way.
You mentioned moving on quite quickly… Does that mean most of your work is complete before the rest of the cast and crew come in to work on a film?
That’s right, yes. I mean, I do try and come in to visit and start my day with the shoot crew, with the art director, but you’re right that sometimes people don't even know who built what because they have to step away and move on to the next set. We're sort of a funny department in that we have so much run up, we do so much pre-production, and then we leave it and it’s almost like you're handing over the keys. It’s part of our process. We're always 20 steps ahead of the crew, otherwise the whole thing falls apart.
Lachlan Bailey: “Just focus on that moment”
Kate Hawley: “It’s the push and pull”
Sandra Barclay: “Light is essential to life”
Jessie Ware: “I trust myself more”
Harvey Fierstein: “We all grow from one another”
Claudio Miranda: “Make it as real as possible”
Tony Cragg: “Where do you want to go with it?”
Gary Card: “I’m doing it on my own terms”
