Happy birthday to English singer-songwriter and ethereal baroque pop goddess Kate Bush. Known for her thoughtful, inventive, vibrant work, Bush reserves her gifts for the stage and offers rare interviews. The “Wuthering Heights” artist has shared some powerful musings, however, talking about what it means to be an artist, how she approaches her work, and her true feelings about, well, quotes.
“I really like the idea of work being allowed to continually evolve. I’m not sure you’re ever really happy with something you create, you try and do your best, and there’s always certain constraints, whether it’s energy or whatever, but you can only do your best at the time. I just think it’s really great to have situations where you can open it up again if you want to.”
“The more you work, the more a certain type of character evolves.”
“I don’t think I do feel confident all the time. That’s obviously how I want it to feel. When you watch a performer you want to feel that it’s comfortable [for them], and you’re not seeing any sense of the technique behind it. Hopefully you just feel [the emotion]. It’s very important to me to try and get a sense of emotion to come through the performance.”
“I think musicians have a responsibility to try and do something that is good. It’s so hard. It’s very difficult to pull something out of the hat creatively. Although I say it’s their responsibility, it’s really just people trying to do the best that they can.”
“I think when I’m working creatively, I don’t really think of myself of writing as a woman. I just think of writing as me, as a person, if that makes sense.”
“It’s not important to me that people understand me.”
“What I’ve tended to do is to use my own experiences to get into someone else’s mind, like in Wuthering Heights.”
“Writing, film, sculpture, music: it’s all make-believe, really.”
“I wasn’t an easy, happy-go-lucky girl because I used to think about everything so much, and I think I probably still do.”
“I work in a very contained environment, usually.”
“Music is being continually devalued. You have to fight for your music not to be treated as a disposable item.”
“Artists shouldn’t be made famous. You know… they’re just … as important as… um doctors, and priests … or maybe not as important sometimes, and yet they have this huge aura of almost god-like quality about them, just because their craft makes a lot of money. And at the same time it is a forced importance — you know, football stars and theatre stars — It is man-made so the press can feed off it.”
“I could find faults with all my albums because that’s just a part of being an artist – it’s hard being a human being, isn’t it?”
“I think quotes are very dangerous things.”