Adrianne Lenker Quotes

There’s something special in music about the repetition of playing something where it becomes a home and a fortress and a space that you inhabit, like maybe we could move this little thing here, or rearrange the furniture. You’re so acquainted with every part of it.

It’s about surrendering to this feeling of utter fragility, and singing through the volatility of it all. The earth is unstable, and I’m part of the earth. I can feel it coursing through my own body. I feel the energy of everything, flickering. Let’s just sing together.

I feel like there’s such ancient pain in us as humans. For instance, we come from this patriarchal lineage where women have been oppressed, and we’re feeling, I think, collective pain from these energies being so out of balance.

It’s like, the more you zoom in and focus on the details, the closer to the invisible and immeasurable qualities – like consciousness and energies – you get. And expanding outwards, into the cosmos, you learn more about the invisible or perceptible things.

Some people operate in complete fear that they’re gonna lose their stuff and their money. That sounds like hell to me. And then I guess some people operate with hands open, and maybe empty, but at least striving for a deeper understanding of what it means to care.

It’s rare for me to sit in a room with my guitar and feel like I can’t stop playing, because it just sounds so good.

I’m attracted to wilderness in any sense. Which is why I’m attracted to New York in a way, because I feel like it’s a wilderness of people and textures. Just like, there’s so much life and richness here. And you can get lost in it.

When you’re playing music and you’re starting to expose yourself for the first time, there’s nothing more powerful than being listened to and being actually heard.

I want everyone to feel very welcomed in the space of our music and our songs, it doesn’t matter what you believe or think, I just want to cultivate a space of peace and to touch on these things that bind us as humans.

I was born into a religious cult in Indianapolis, straight up. They had an apartment complex in this one area, and there were all these rules. My parents met through church and got married really shortly after, when they were both searching for connection and meaning, just like everyone is when they’re 20.

I like leaving a space hollowed out, where as I change I can inject new meaning in the shell of the songs all of the time. Where anyone who listens can hopefully inhabit them in their own way.

I don’t really think of Minnesota when I think of home.

Well, whenever I visit New York it feels pretty romantic, so I sometimes think about coming back here. But then I wonder if it’s just ’cause I’m visiting that it feels so good. But also, Minnesota. I could imagine myself finding a place in Minneapolis.

The first song I wrote, when I was 8, was about feeling really angry – like the weight of everything on my shoulders.

I never went through a wave of hating Christianity, even though my parents were born-again Christians, and there were a lot of ideas that were being practiced that I think were misguided.

Like, I’d rather tour maybe six months out of the year, instead of nine.

I feel that performing is its own art form, and recording is its own art form, and writing is its own art form, and that they all can happen simultaneously but at different paces.

When I first started out in the band, I had so many walls up.

I don’t like it when religions take it to the point where they discredit all other religions, because how could one sector of people have figured it out and know that that’s it? But I do think that there’s so much beauty in a lot of the stories or scriptures.

There’s a natural separation that kids have to go through with their parents, but then when you put that on top of actually having a career, it gets even more painful.

So we’re in this process of letting go of our own attachments to our physical forms and to the people we love, and… basically everything. Life is like this one big process of letting go.

My dad was basically my manager from ages 13 to 16. I was on this train towards becoming a child pop star. Not that I would have necessarily become a star, but that was the goal.

I am always thinking about records I want to make.

I can’t really choose how I’m going to connect to music. I find it just has to hit a wave, and just wash over me and take me completely to some other space.

I always said I got my music from my dad, but my mom had these cassettes – Bjoerk and the Cocteau Twins and the Talking Heads. That was her music, and she would just get so wild and free when she listened to it.

With music, when you finish a record, you are entwined with it throughout your existence in a way which is both interesting and challenging because it’s a living form, you have to come back to it.

Mostly I’ve just been stealing little moments for myself in order to write – in the bathroom at a hotel, or just slipping away for a half an hour. Amidst all of the touring, life has been happening.

I really love crafting albums and thinking of albums as a whole, not just individual songs or singles or just tracks, but a whole entire album.

A lot of our creative flow comes from a place of curiosity and exploration. It often feels like we’re excavating and asking questions and not just giving answers but really just exploring.

When I was born, my dad was playing music, so I’m pretty sure he was singing to me in the womb. I was born into music, in a way, because he was playing acoustic guitar. I was around an instrument growing up.