Latest Mirah Quotes from Interviews

• Sometimes I joke around that if I weren't a musician, I would be a power lifter. I don't think people expect it from me because I'm little.

  Mirah

  Thinking, People, Musician

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I just write about what comes up. Sometimes you're thinking about Palestine, and sometimes you're thinking about sex. People have a lot going on.

  Mirah

  Sex, Writing, Thinking

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I don't feel like I have a lot of reference to sexual innuendo on my songs.

  Mirah

  Song, Innuendo, Feels

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• Sex is fun to sing about.

  Mirah

  Sex, Fun

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I identify as being an independent artist. I think people often forget that Indie is actually short for independent. For me, the word has a meaning more than what it connotes from an industry standpoint.

  Mirah

  Independent, Artist, Thinking

  Source: therumpus.net

• You can choose not to be a performing musician. You can choose to just be a recording artist. But then you run into the problem of trying to earn a living and balancing the time that you spend working on your creative efforts to just getting the bills paid. You can go off the grid and live in a cabin and make whatever art you want and also provide all the sustenance you need and not interact with anybody else.

  Mirah

  Running, Art, Effort

  Source: therumpus.net

• I think that there is a purity aesthetic, like "I just make art because I'm an artist and I can't help it. I don't care what the critics say." But different mediums have a different relationship with the public. If you're in a performing medium it's hard not to place some weight on whether or not people come to your shows, or whether or not they're enjoying them.

  Mirah

  Art, Thinking, People

  Source: therumpus.net

• That's my goal, is to stay in a truthful place. And sometimes that means writing a silly song, or singing about sex or singing about environmental destruction or heartbreak, or my grandmother. The subject isn't what the core is about, it's about truthfulness and authenticity and that just comes from my heart and soul.

  Mirah

  Song, Sex, Silly

  Source: therumpus.net

• I definitely enjoy working within different contexts, with different collaborators, and in different locations. I need to keep feeding myself as an artist by working with different people. I see continuing with that. I've also enjoyed getting to explore different kinds of music and instruments in the last couple of years.

  Mirah

  Couple, Artist, Years

  Source: therumpus.net

• My identity is mostly as a songwriter and lyricist and singer. I also have a lot of production ideas but I have my own limitations in terms of what instruments I'm actually proficient at and what I can do myself, so I really love working with people on the production end; just really going for it with orchestration and instrumentation and production. That's where I see myself going: maintaining my integrity and abilities as a songwriter, but applying it to different contexts, to where I can put on a huge feathered costume and roll around in the ocean.

  Mirah

  Integrity, Ocean, Ideas

  Source: therumpus.net

• The center for me is my heart, actually, and my emotional connection with the work. That's where authenticity comes from. It's also the first thing that hits me about other people's work, or watching other people perform, "Do I believe the person?" Even if I don't like what someone is doing or if I don't like the sound, if I believe them, I do like them. I am able to appreciate them as an artist.

  Mirah

  Believe, Heart, Artist

  Source: therumpus.net

• You're born and then you're on your own, you start having relationships, you're developing relationships to the world and your wider community, and then disappointing things happen.

  Mirah

  Community, World, Disappointing

  Source: therumpus.net

• What I try to communicate is that there's a lot of crossover between that feeling of romantic heartbreak and this devastating feeling of knowing that we've punched a hole in the planet and it's spilling out oil and destroying the Gulf of Mexico and the ecosystem and seabirds and every creature.

  Mirah

  Ecosystems, Oil, Knowing

  Source: therumpus.net

• There is a very palpable difference for me between some of my earlier songs and where my later work has gone. If I were making my dream set list for tonight's show, I'm probably not going to include a whole bunch of stuff from the album that I made when I was 23.

  Mirah

  Dream, Song, Differences

  Source: therumpus.net

• Every form of communication is for the purpose of feeling, experiencing, sharing. Everyone has their own intense journey through life, and you don't want to do it all alone. It's really meaningful to be able to share with people. Whether it's your political beliefs, or what goes on for you emotionally, or keeping track of history.

  Mirah

  Meaningful, Communication, Journey

  Source: therumpus.net

• I know that a lot of songwriters write about a break up. It's a really popular topic. I think heartbreak is the number one thing people write about. I could say that's narcissistic somehow because they want everybody to admire how pained they are. But I actually do think there's something beautiful and uplifting about knowing that you're not the only one who is experiencing or has experienced that kind of devastating loss. Everyone's experienced that.

  Mirah

  Beautiful, Uplifting, Writing

  Source: therumpus.net

• I'm a terrible sentence finisher. I think that's why I'm a songwriter. When you write a song, there are no rules, and I think that I talk as if there are no rules. But then I run this great risk of no one understanding me at all.

  Mirah

  Running, Song, Writing

  Source: therumpus.net

• The music goes into people in a totally different way than words. There's air, there's the sound of words, there's touch, there's music. All of those things have a really distinct way of meeting and entering people's bodies and souls. It's the most beautiful part about humans; that we make music.

  Mirah

  Beautiful, Air, People

  Source: therumpus.net

• So when you're talking about lyrics in the context of music, it's not just about what the words mean, and what you were thinking about when you wrote it. It's not cognitive in that same way. It's almost like music turns words into touch, which is hard to describe, like the feeling of your shirt on your back. It's a pretty delicate thing to try to put into words. You just feel it.

  Mirah

  Mean, Thinking, Talking

  Source: therumpus.net

• Writing a song is almost like cheating-writing because you don't have to finish your sentences, you don't have to use any punctuation, no one's going to edit your work. It's so wide open. People just grunt and that's a song. You can kind of do anything.

  Mirah

  Cheating, Song, Writing

  Source: therumpus.net

• I do feel songwriting is a bit of its own creature and the writerliness of it...it's freeing. It's good for people who have an innate resistance to any restrictions whatsoever.

  Mirah

  People, Resistance, Restriction

  Source: therumpus.net

• I do experience something pretty commonly with every song; there's some moment where it clicks into its own life with its own emotional impact that I feel, and even though technically I'm the one writing the song, it's like watching a storm come in.

  Mirah

  Song, Writing, Emotional

  Source: therumpus.net

• I'm doing more deep listening, which is part of the role or job of the songwriter. I think with a lot of songwriting, songs sing themselves to you tonally and also lyrically. And it's not necessarily your own visual memories that are writing the song. It's like there are words that you can catch out there and you have to be able to see and hear them.

  Mirah

  Song, Jobs, Memories

  Source: therumpus.net

• I think some modesty actually serves me by just accepting that I am an instrument. I'm not trying to match up to an ideal as some kind of challenge. It's more like I use the family tree of music and song that I feel has fit me as an encouragement; like it's a bed to rest in rather than a challenge to try to better myself over, to try to.

  Mirah

  Song, Encouragement, Thinking

  Source: therumpus.net

• I do notice that my songs fit all over the map, even in terms of the colloquialisms in them. The songs come out with their references intact, almost unheeded by me. It's like they existed somehow before they met me with their relationship to the tradition, and then they just end up coming through me at that moment because of my relationship to some certain kind of music that I've listened to in my life. I know that sounds a little bit woooey.

  Mirah

  Song, Sound, Maps

  Source: therumpus.net

You May Also Like:

Thao Nguyen

Phil Elvrum

John Congleton

Bernard Herrmann

Son Lux

Neko Case

Joanna Newsom