Willis Earl Beal: The person on the shrine is myself. I listen to my o...

I'd rather be somewhere building a house, if I knew how. The whole idea of being a professional artist is like a demeaning kind of thing.

Willis Earl Beal

artist house ideas

I would much rather not be the center of attention, and I'd much rather travel and be writing my novel, rather than standing on a stage and trying to get people to understand something.

Willis Earl Beal

writing trying people

I am nothing; nothing is everything

Willis Earl Beal

Sometimes I wish it were a simpler world. I love and hate people. When I say I hate people, I really truly mean it. Sometimes I think everyone should be dead, that the animals would be better off without people. But sometimes I go into the square and I look at all the people passing me by and it fulfills me -as long as they don't bother me. As long as they just walk past and don't ask me for anything, it's fine. I almost wish I could think about it in a mundane way.

Willis Earl Beal

hate mean thinking

My delusion outweighs my talent by far and it always will, because if it doesn't, then there's no point in living.

Willis Earl Beal

no-point delusion talent

It always fascinates me how you can get so much joy listening to another person, when me, personally, I can only listen to myself and my music these days. I've got some people in my iPod, but I only listen to myself. I'm folding into myself and I used to think that that was what you're supposed to do - you're supposed to reject everyone else and figure out who you are. You get little shards and points of reference, but that's how you confirm that only you know what is right for you. Everything else is pollution. What's starting to happen to me is sort of an identity crisis.

Willis Earl Beal

joy people thinking

I'm very curious about people, and one of the most difficult truths for me to accept as a person is that I'll never be anyone else, and I will never fully understand anyone's perspective other than my own. Because I've come to some understanding of that, I feel it's this very difficult but worthwhile challenge to get as close as I possible can to that. If the only way that we can do that is through language, then that's how it has to be done.

Willis Earl Beal

perspective understanding people

Actually, my ideal life would be to have an evergreen tree farm and, every December, I'd load them up and just stand out on the street and sell Christmas trees.

Willis Earl Beal

christmas-tree december tree

Music didn't really occur to me. Michael Jordan and Batman were my favorite two entities then. Michael Jackson was there, but I didn't really get into Bob Dylan, for instance, until I was in my 20s. The record I heard of his that got me interested in singing was Knocked Out Loaded, which is what many people consider to be his worst record.

Willis Earl Beal

my-favorite singing people

I heard Tom Waits in this kinky shop on Belmont Street in Chicago. Considering the way I was raised, they were such obscure voices, but their music saved my life - I didn't know who I was before I heard Bob Dylan and Tom Waits.

Willis Earl Beal

kinky obscure waiting

I love Lana Del Rey! It's weird because I read something that said, "Oh, Willis Earl Beal and Lana Del Rey are the antithesis of each other." When in fact, she was what I wanted to sound like.

Willis Earl Beal

antithesis

You got this new breed of hipster chicks and hipster men that don't understand anything about sacrifice. They didn't lay it on the line. People like Cat Power, Tom Waits, they are the last of the beats, the real true philosophers.

Willis Earl Beal

hipster cat real

I deteriorate. I might tell you something one day and then something else another day. You fold in on yourself and that's why this whole artistry thing is the devil. It's evil. I hope I don't succumb to it.

Willis Earl Beal

devil one-day evil

I never actually sexually attacked anybody. But I'm a writer, too, and I was always trying to figure out a way to recreate the experience of being this Albert Camus, Stranger-like solitary protagonist character without incriminating myself in any way, like, "Oh, what a perv!" I want to reach out to anybody out there who may have been riding on the train one time when things in their life were completely falling apart and saw a girl's legs in a skirt and it's the last bit of goodness that you can see.

Willis Earl Beal

trying character fall

The truth is, all products - mine included - will take you away from yourself. You can listen to this music and think its pretty cool - or not - but the only thing that's going to save your soul is going somewhere alone and staying in that place for a while. Do something for yourself.

Willis Earl Beal

truth-is soul thinking

I first saw Dead Man in high school, and it changed everything. That movie was like a memory to me - I would get things that occurred in that movie confused with my actual life.

Willis Earl Beal

confused memories school

Nobody symbol occurred to me one night at my grandmother's house. The eyes are an inversion of X'd out eyes - the man is enlightened. His teeth are clenched. It's not a smiley face. It's right before he dies. It plays into my philosophy where everybody gets enlightened before they die.

Willis Earl Beal

eye philosophy night

The only way for me to give a good performance is to make myself extremely uncomfortable - and it just so happens that being on stage makes me extremely uncomfortable.

Willis Earl Beal

uncomfortable giving

I want to help people to not feel alone, like I feel and have felt for so long. Everybody's just trying their best. I guess I'm like an anti-star.

Willis Earl Beal

trying long people

I don't know what people want. I have delusions of grandeur, but I'm not sitting here talking to you and thinking that I'm the goddamn President. I want to know everything, but I just can't.

Willis Earl Beal

president people thinking

The person on the shrine is myself. I listen to my own music constantly. I made a whole other record already. I look at myself on the internet constantly, so much so that I actually physically hate my face. It's like I've become apart from myself. I can't even live up to myself.