You always hear these stories of how Hollywood is so merciless on composers and how they all get beaten up. Nobody beats me up as much as I beat myself up. This is what I love doing and I have one life to do it in, and I better do it right. I better do it well.
Interpretation
The quote expresses the idea that self-criticism can be more intense than external criticism, highlighting the passion for one's craft.
In this quote, Hans Zimmer reflects on the relentless nature of self-expectation and the pressure he places on himself as a composer. Despite acknowledging the harsh realities of the Hollywood music industry, he emphasizes his love for the art and the urgency to excel in his work since life offers limited opportunities to achieve greatness.
In practice
This quote could be used during a motivational speech for artists to encourage them to pursue their passion diligently.
The thing that hasn't changed, and I don't think will ever change, is that the operative word in music is "play." You have to have a playfulness about it. As the world shifts, it's starting to understand more and more that to have a playfulness about any and everything is actually the way of having a better life, or being more creative, or being more productive.
Anything can become a musical sound. The wind on telegraph wires is a great sound; get it into your machine and play it and it becomes interesting.
What's the point of getting up in the morning unless you're gonna have an adventure? As the moments of our life are ticking away you have to be aware that it needs to be an adventure
Trust me, if you're working on a $70 million movie and you're the last guy, you feel all that weight on your shoulders.
I've spent my life trying to make things simpler. Because I find ultimately that complicated doesn't reach the heart.
The writing gets done away from the keyboard and away from the studio in my head, in solitude. And then I come in and hopefully have something, then I wrestle with sounds and picture all day long. But the ideas usually come from a more obscure place, like a conversation with a director, a still somebody shows you, or whatever.
I have always held the old-fashioned opinion that the primary object of work of fiction should be to tell a story.
If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another.
Whenever I sit with a bowl of soup before me, listening to the murmur that penetrates like the distant song of an insect, lost in contemplation of the flavours to come, I feel as if I were being drawn into a trance.
I aspire to a poetry of great formal integrity, deep passion and high intellect, and I have many models for how to do that.
Poetry is not a civilizer, rather the reverse, for great poetry appeals to the most primitive instincts.
Fiction does not spring into the world fully grown, like Athena. It is the process of writing and rewriting that makes a fiction original, if not profound.
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