In our culture, the Oedipal drama succeeds in making us assume either a male or female sexual position. Certainly this is an ancient construct that's rapidly coming apart.
John MausMusical acts that feign enthusiasm for what they're doing the guitarist who jumps up and down, like it's choreographed are so transparently vacuous.
John MausThe man believes the woman's got the hidden secret. That's a rare thing. You meet lots of people, and they're all deserved of love, of course, but romantic love involves some kind of supplement: she has the secret. That's what's desired.
John MausIt's so important what you're doing in your life. It's tremendously important to the work, and no aesthetic theories take that into account.
John MausIt's a very teenage idea - this idea that thought is ruined when we give over to television shows and glossy magazines and what they are telling us to do. The alternative, I believe, in is pitiless censorship. Because we owe each other the best effort we can to see one another without that mediation.
John MausThere's love and there's romantic love. The Greeks had different words for different kinds of love. And we just got "love." I don't know what you would call the other kinds - maybe brotherly love, Christian love, the love of Saint Francis, love of everyone and everything. Then there's romantic love, which, by and large, is a pain in the ass, a kind of trauma.
John Maus