February 2012
4 posts
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“I didn’t expect to meet somebody from pop music who was really quite a normal...”
– Krzysztof Penderecki on Jonny Greenwood, 2012. (via remyxomatosis)
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Q: Pablo Picasso once said: "Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth." How do you react to this quote as describing the role of artists to inspire change and show us what the world should be like?
Yorke: Fox News is a lie. [laughs] Someone needs to tell the truth, but it shouldn't be my job. So I guess I'd be on the lying side. I think no artist can claim to have any access to the truth, or an authentic version of an event. But obviously they have slightly better means at their disposal because they have their art to energize whatever it is they're trying to write about. They have music.
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duty of expression
Q: So would you say that there's a place for both directly political and non-political artists? What importance do you think each have?
Yorke: Yeah, I don't think we are [political] at all, I think I'm hyper aware of the soapbox thing. It is difficult to make political art work. If all it does is exist in the realms of political discussion, it's using that language, and generally, it's an ugly language. It is very dead, definitely not a thing of beauty. The only reason, I think, that we go anywhere near it is because, like any reason that we buy music, these things get absorbed. These are the things surrounding your life. If you sit down and try to do it purposefully, and try to change this with this, and do this with that, it never works. I think the most important thing about music is the sense of escape. But there are different ways to escape. I think escape is sort of like coming to a show with ten thousand other people and responding to that moment. Sharing that moment—that's escape. Wherever the music came from originally is secondary to what's happening at that moment, how the music sends you somewhere else. That's the important thing.