Ian MacKaye: “We want our own sys­tem and you can’t stop us from build­ing it”

From a recent interview with Ian MacKaye linked below:

I was say­ing to you ear­lier that I think of artists and mu­si­cians and film­mak­ers and writ­ers as trans­la­tors. This is some­thing that I got to think­ing about: “What the fuck are these peo­ple do­ing?” And I think of them as trans­la­tors. In other words, that some­body hears some­thing and they are try­ing to ex­plain to other peo­ple, us­ing that medium, what is it that they are hear­ing. Vi­sual artists see some­thing, they see the world in a way and then they are try­ing to show peo­ple what it is that they’re see­ing. It’s lit­er­ally a trans­la­tion. That was re­ally help­ful for me in terms of meet­ing peo­ple who I felt like, “well this per­son is in­ter­est­ing to me be­cause the rea­son they are do­ing this is that they don’t have a choice in the mat­ter.” And maybe that’s what you’re talk­ing about. Like, I think that some­times, whether or not they ad­dress it in sa­tanic wor­ship, or even peo­ple who are just like, “I wanna make money,” some­times there is noth­ing else for them to do. They have to do that. Peo­ple say to me, “What is your fa­vorite kind of mu­sic, what do you like to lis­ten to?” And I al­ways say, “my fa­vorite kind of mu­sic is the mu­sic made by peo­ple who don’t have a choice in the mat­ter.” So I can lis­ten to any­thing… it could be punk or blues or what­ever. I just want it to feel like the per­son who’s mak­ing that mu­sic heard some­thing and is say­ing, “this is what I’m hear­ing.” It’s the same way with any kind of vi­sual stuff. I’m not par­tic­u­larly well ed­u­cated about vi­sual art, I don’t have a de­gree in art his­tory so just don’t know a lot of that stuff, but oc­ca­sion­ally I’ll see some­thing and in my mind, I’ll be like, “Wow, some­thing is go­ing on here that it re­ally com­pels me.” And then if I read about it and find out that per­son saw some­thing, they are like, “Here’s what I saw! Here’s what I fuckin saw!” That’s what I want to feel when I look at things, that’s what I want to feel when I hear things. That is a form of in­de­pen­dence, right?

Source: Ian MacKaye and Brandon Stosuy on independence, creativity, and The Creative Independent – The Creative Independent