I often envy a filmmaker or a playwright or an author where people are like, "Yeah, I sat down every night and read your book and it was beautiful." Or, "Yeah, I went to the movies and all I did was watch the movie because that's all you could do at the movies." Where with music, it's like, "Ugh, I love your music. I listen to it while I'm jogging thinking about how I hate my body." But it is also the privilege of being a musician is you can have your music in this documented form and play it live and that's, I think, what draws me to it the most.
Dan DeaconWhen music becomes a job, you all of a sudden have other jobs and you become like a manager of time. If you have no ability to do that, your job gets very hard very quickly.
Dan DeaconGoing back to the paradigm we live in, the only way to do music is if I can sustain living off of it. If I can't live off of it, I'm not going to be able to make as much music.
Dan DeaconI think there is going to be a large paradigm shift in a few years, and it could either be to a new age of enlightenment and unity and we'll be raised to a new level of consciousness, or it could be a return to a dark age of kings and mass, open oppression followed by a die-off of human culture.
Dan DeaconWhen I went to school, it was really just to immerse myself in listening to, studying, and making music. I came out like, "How is this going to be more than a hobby I'm always paying off debt for?" I could've sat at a desk and written pieces for orchestras that never would have been played, or I could've written music for me as a performer. I play electronics, and the places I was gonna be playing were bass clubs and house parties.
Dan DeaconI don't think there's anything wrong in being an entertainer because if at the end of the day people want to forget about their problems or to process their problems through something joyous, I think that's ultimately what my role in this is.
Dan DeaconEmail is a mind-killer. Like, I really think getting a smartphone is the worst move I ever did in being a musician because while we've just been talking my phone's vibrated like 15 times and I only get push notifications for like two apps, so either like a bunch of houses are going up for sale right now or someone's like, "Why aren't you emailing me back?" It's just hard to stay in the moment. I can understand why people go to retreats to write and stuff like that but I don't have the time.
Dan Deacon