I guess the role of art is to make something that is ambiguous and complex. Carrie Brownstein More Quotes by Carrie Brownstein More Quotes From Carrie Brownstein Practice. Learn and then unlearn - that's the trick in finding your own style of playing. You can't merely emulate, you have to innovate, or at the very least create your own path into the process. Carrie Brownstein style practice life Rihanna has guts and she always seems to be singing from someplace honest, dark and fierce. Carrie Brownstein honest singing dark I am a horrible visual artist. I can't fix a car, sew, knit, cook, etc. Statistically, there is more I don't do than do. Carrie Brownstein etc car artist I think hip-hop does a very good job of infusing comedy and humor and wit into music, a lot more than other genres. Carrie Brownstein hip-hop jobs thinking Rock Band is more like Stairmaster than it is like rock 'n' roll - it's the same steps with different degrees of difficulty. Carrie Brownstein degrees rocks different The game Rock Band has been haunting me like a bad ring tone. It gets stuck in my head and momentarily effaces all that I love about music. Carrie Brownstein rocks band games With Portlandia, I don't think our intention is always to find something funny. Sometimes the humor comes from taking something really seriously. We're okay with making somebody feel uncomfortable or uneasy. Carrie Brownstein intention sometimes thinking I read a lot; fiction and non-fiction are the mediums I find most edifying and inspiring. I watch movies and listen to music and take lots and lots of walks. Nature is a nice reset button for me, it's how I get a lot of thinking done. Carrie Brownstein reset-button nice thinking If your whole world of a band or music is taking place in a digital realm or on technological devices, it's all mediated through those things. That takes away from the experiential and sensual nature of music. That's a lot less exciting for me to think about. It's not my ideal way of living with music. Carrie Brownstein sensual world thinking It's hard to beat the visceral high of playing live and creating something spontaneous. Carrie Brownstein spontaneous creating beats I'll admit that I'm not quite certain how to sum up an entire year in music anymore; not when music has become so temporal, so specific and personal, as if we each have our own weather system and what we listen to is our individual forecast. Carrie Brownstein individual weather years I feel like I came in comedy's side door, and still feel very fraudulent in many ways. Carrie Brownstein sides doors way I've honestly always been an overly analytical, highly observant person. I was playing music but thinking about it at same time, which was sort of exhausting. Aside from the pain of writing - you're not really in a gang like you are in band, it's a little bit lonelier - I think it was always something that I'd wanted to do. So the transition wasn't abrupt or painful. Carrie Brownstein pain writing thinking I have no desire to play music unless I need music. Carrie Brownstein play desire needs After Sleater-Kinney broke up in 2006 I had very little desire to play music. It took well over three years before picking up a guitar meant anything to me other than an exercise. Carrie Brownstein guitar exercise years I've never understood people who play up the artifice of music. Carrie Brownstein understood play people You'd hope that no writing about music could supersede the music itself. But I do think that blogs mirror the way that we are listening. It comes at you fast and it's timely and then five minutes later we're on to something else. It caters to our desire for instant gratification. And I think blogs also have fluidity that's exciting. You have a lot of real enthusiastic music fans for the most part that are writing sometimes for a large audience, and I think certain blogs have a little too much power over what someone likes or doesn't like. Carrie Brownstein real writing thinking Music has always been my constant, my salvation. It's cliche to write that, but it's true. Carrie Brownstein cliche salvation writing With Sleater-Kinney, we did a lot of improvisation in our live shows, and even our process of songwriting involved bringing in disparate parts and putting them together to form something cohesive. Carrie Brownstein form process together For a while I had somebody that came to clean my house that turned out to be in a band that I really loved. Carrie Brownstein clean band house