"The thing I hate the most about advertising is that it attracts all the bright, creative and ambitious young people, leaving us mainly with the slow and self-obsessed to become our artists.. Modern art is a disaster area. Never in the field of human history has so much been used by so many to say so little."

Banksy

(via Eric Smith)

Cuts like a knife, as Bryan Adams would say…

Truth resonates.  And this does.  Especially about artists.

In New York City there’s a culture of critics who make artists so anxious they slow down and try to execute according to the critics’ desires.  That’s one of the reasons I left.  No one cares about what you do in L.A., they’re too into their own trip and shopping for more impressive wheels.

As for criticism in popular music, it died when Jon Landau left the field to manage Bruce Springsteen, critics are meaningless in music.  

And have just about become so in movies.

So what we’ve got now is musicians and filmmakers telling us how great they are, even though they’re positively mediocre.

People take too long to write songs and make records.  They’d be better off stopping what they’re doing and writing and recording another.  Some of the best songs of all time were written almost instantly and recorded in one take.  That’s what inspiration will do for you.

Don’t polish the turd, squeeze out some more excrement until you get to the gold.

Not that we want to see all the excrement, but we do want to see the gold.

Look at it this way, if you panned for gold by looking in one pan for hours, what are the odds you’d get rich?  You’ve got to dig down deep in the river once again.

Turns out there’s a plethora of Banksy quotes.  You can read them here:

Banksy > Quotes

The movie hype meant almost nothing to me.  Made me aware, but did not make me want to go.  I hate when people sell me things.  What I want sells itself.  What I want I hear about from trusted sources with no financial involvement.  After reading this quote sent to me by a reader, I’m intrigued, I’m gonna track that documentary down.

Advertising has deadlines.  It’s got to go, just like the show (that’s a reference to SNL, which I wrote about last week, did you read it?)  By not thinking their work is so important, advertising agencies are able to deliver greatness…some of the time.

That’s reality.  No one bats a thousand.

And as for how much time it took Steely Dan to make those classic albums, there’s an exception to every rule.