Archives: Backstories

David Lynch famously hated discussing his work:

“When you finish anything, people want to talk about it. And I think it’s almost like a crime. A film or a painting – each thing is its own sort of language and it’s not right to try to say the same thing in words.”

I agree with that: great art allows the consumer to imbue their own meaning onto it, and sometimes learning too much about the intent of the artist can actually diminish the work.

In The Backstory, artists share a handful of things (7-10, ideally) that shaped them — either generally, or focused on a project, like their latest album or book. The things can be anything: poems, books, albums, movies, personal experiences, anything goes.