John Frusciante
"The point is, I´m weird, but I never felt weird."
"I may again know John."
"Music is the face of God."
"The best service you can do for mankind is mind your own biznis."
"To me music is the centre of the universe and the voice of the spirits and the voice of God and the voice of all the people who have lived and died...At least the ones I'm connected to."
"It's, it's like I'm in the fourth dimension and somebody is asking me to describe it verbally and that's what the fourth dimension is all about, is no words, no symbols, no images, all pure, real energy and vibrations. And, and if I thought about how cruel of a world this is, I would probably just commit suicide after a while, if that was what I spent my energy thinking about. I would definitely not have any strength left to create music."
"I wouldn't let anything at all that I thought wasn't directly aimed at helping my creativity come out, I treat it as if it were a knife to my heart like ah... William Burrough always talks about the world is nothing but allies and enemies and it's important to, to understand what things around you are the enemies and a lot of the time your worst enemy is your, is your ego."
"The parts of me inside that feel constantly let down, or constantly in a state of failure, I'm in touch with them and I love them...it's not something I run away from."
"If there is anyone reading this who doesn't already play music or write stories, or write poetry or painted or draw or gamble or anything you should go to the art store, buy some water colors and paper and throw paint on the paper, and see what happens. Don't try to be good, just do it for fun and you will realize once again that you are alive and wide awake. Take advantage of it!"
"I wanted to play the way that people play who invent something original and cool and colorful to do based on the fact that they have the limitations technically, because they developed their style as soon as they learned how to play. I'm talking about people in new wave and punk rock. I wanted every song to sound like that but like a different person. Like every song to have an approach like that but each song, not a song that the next song would sound like the same person who played, you know what I mean?"
"...my whole object as a musician no matter who I'm playing with, is to get as far away from myself as possible. The further away from the situation I am, the better the music is... A lot of the time I feel like I'm just letting the air play me and the air makes the music and I'm just an outline within that... but that's the real me, what surrounds me... the air that surrounds me is the actual walking person and this bit of flesh in between is just a blob." (1994)
"Beginning nowhere, a place that had been pulling me, yelling for me, chasing me as well as us nothings playing John Frusciante could gather, ever since we were untangled at some hotels in Europe where I was very close to punching out some interviewers there as they were insisting that I was a rock star and not a nothing."
"Did you ever just try to disappear, actually be in another universe, when you shut your eyes?... But there's fun places you can be in the midst of all that too... Like you don't have to totally turn off your brain... Like ah... I used to do things... on stage like things to trick myself... contradict myself... like I'll tell myself I'm gonna start this solo on this fret on this note... and then right when it gets to the last second... I'm not allowed to go to that fret... and I have to start somewhere else... or I'll tell the audience that this song is dedicated to the baby born right now... right when I say it... but then when it gets to the solo... I think about the first baby born right when it gets to that solo... so the audience thinks they're thinking about the same baby as me but we're really thinking about two different babies... that kinda thing." (1994)
"Death is a place I'm really looking forward to being in. I can also be very happy in this life, but it's usually happiness that I get from other lives I've lived and other dimensions. This life is hardly important to me. It's very small compared to the importance that I think the fourth and fifth dimension have. Those places are much more real to me, like when you have a dream and it's more real to you than real life. Compared to where I'll be going, this life seems like a dream that just feels like a dream." (11/97)
"Everytime you put on a record or a CD, it's a dimension in time; it's a piece of time that's suddenly moved from one dimension to another. A moment in 1927, or a series of moments that accumulated into being one song in 1967, suddenly appears again in 1999 because I press a button. That's like dying and waking up in another world." (8/99)
"It's the best thing in the world to have nothing but your creativity to think about every day." (8/99)
"I used to always see things in the outside world as being 'the enemies of an artist.' I don't see it that way anymore. To me, everything an artist needs is inside of himself, and it really doesn't matter what's going on in the world. Nothing else matters. You don't need to have things perfect, you don't need to have a lot of money or a beautiful girl. If your job in life is to create, you can find inside yourself what you need to make beautiful art and beautiful music.
"But you might have to clean yourself out, spiritually or physically. You gotta constantly purify yourself, living in the city, around human beings. There might be people close to you who affect you inside yourself in such a corrupt way that it screws with your ability to do what you do. But if you make sure that the people who are close to you are good people who are there for you and love you, you can create your temple everywhere you go." (4/01)
"I was so happy someone was visiting me, I'd make food for them. When they were gone, I'd cry." (7/02, talking about the spirits he was connected to in the mid-90's)
"Oh yeah. But I realised that there is a way to hold onto something that doesn't exist yet. That's what takes place when a song is written: You see something that isn't there. Then you use your instrument to find it." (7/02, answering whether he'd ever struggled as a beginning songwriter)
"Making art is about accepting what's going on around you and turning it into something beautiful, no matter what it is. During this record we had the catastrophe at the Empire State Building and we just kept on writing." (7/02, talking about 9-11)
"I was smoking pot night and day and I went through the world thinking it should be the way I believe it should be. And if it's not like that, then I'll shut that part of the world out. I was scared I'd lose my ability to be creative. I thought being a heroin addict and making my life nothing but good feelings was the best way to maintain being a creative person. But it's not." (7/02, about his teen years)
"I remember it like I'm remembering somebody else's life. I remember how spirits at that time were plaguing me and insulting me all the time. It was good. Because what I was capable of compared to what I was doing was so huge, so the spirits were giving me hell for it... They like me now. I know how to work hard to make them happy. I like the idea that I'll never be in the position of having nothing to eat and nowhere to live again. And I love being able to buy as many records as I want to buy." (7/02)
"When I was playing guitar, I would play this game with myself. I would say, 'I'm going to leave my body now. I'm going to be holding the guitar and recording what I'm playing, but I'm not going to be here.' In time I just started having this natural belief in these spiritual forces that were possessing my body. I'd always had voices in my head as a kid, but now I started getting a really excessive amount of voices in my head. They were having conversations with me. Telling me about the future. They'd say something was going to hapen in two minutes. And whatever it was they said would really happen. They would do these things to show me that they were in tune with the future. Because the future has already happened many times. They don't live in a dimension that has time, but they sort of feed off the energies of people who live in dimensions that have time.
"By the time I quit the band, I pretty much was devoting myself to nothing but magical progress. I made it my life's purpose to acheive a more full contact with these beings. And I did. I got to the point five years later where I could sit in a room with a ghost or an astral body for a half hour at a time, which takes a tremendous amount of concentration. I would do that every day, for at least a half hour." (8/02)
"A lot of fighting had to be done to get where I am now. But I think me and the spirits that are on my side really won." (8/02)
"I've always been a person who's had a lot of problems with the stress of the world. Like, I'm susceptible to motion tension. When I get in a car or airplane, it makes me tense. But since I started doing yoga, where you're building muscle as well as relaxing yourself, I haven't had such a problem with motion tension. I don't do the actual meditation part of yoga. But I think that when I play guitar I'm probably employing a lot of the rudiments of meditation, because I'm completely focused on something that's kind of abstract. I feel like there's a stillness inside of my mind, which is what you're going after when you do something like meditation. So even though I don't really go to yoga for that spiritual angle, it probably is helping me to be able to do that better." (8/02)
"Most of my supernatural experiences are in the past. It's a world I don't really delve into that much anymore. But I believe that there are things we don't see with our eyes that are making every moment what it is. And every person is made up of a bunch of people. And everybody who's alive is everybody who died. I just think it's all one big energy working together. I see the world as being very well balanced - completely, perfectly balanced." (8/02)
"What I say is to be Creative
"What I have to say to an inhabitant of the earth in 100 years is similar to what I have to say to the present inhabitants of the earth. To be creative.
"I wrote a song just a couple of days ago before getting the request to write this page that came to mind when the intentions (and the sentiments behind) this book were presented to me. The song was about a man living in a future where millions of people are shot everyday, he (who is not famous) is mobbed and robbed everyday, and there are good entertainers, but people don't really care about them. This man feels that it is such a gift to be alive, himself so grateful for every second he has that he cannot understand how people can waste these seconds complaining. This man thru looking for beauty in the world, finds plenty. In the movie, "Pollyanna" she quotes Abe Lincoln as saying ,"If you look for the bad in people you are sure to find it." So look for the good. There are many wonderful things that we are given in this life that we take for granted, but which are tremendous gifts.
"To demonstrate my meaning I will suggest other possible lives, worlds, or dimensions:
"1) A world where everyone is pressed up against everyone else and there is no privacy ever, nor any hope of traveling.
"2) A world where 999 of every 1000 people at every second are awaiting their next opportunity to hurt someone else.
"3) A world where, when you are alone you are also with slimy fast moving monsters who like to enter the holes in your body and can move in one hole and out another forcing one to wear protective gear whenever alone.
"4) A world where food is a bunch of little creatures similar to worms, that cannot die, so must be eaten alive to sustain life.
"5) A world where there are none of the components of shelter and everyone lives outside year round in harsh weather.
"6) A world where neither memory nor identity exist making it impossible for anyone's life to get anywhere whatsoever. No one knows who they are.
"I am very happy to be alive. There is so much fun to be had. Music, movies, books, paintings, drawings...If you have them, what does the real world matter anyway?" (undated, from the Children Of The Future Homepage)
My Thoughts on John Frusciante:
He has completely changed my view of creativity and where art comes from. He is so comfortable in his own body and connected to spiritual forces - he is such a phenomenal human being, you can hardly believe he's real. He has a very old and wise soul. The way I listen to music now is totally different - I try to feel it first before figuring out lyrics. I've been so language oriented, and also thinking that I am responsible for what I do. John Frusciante's influence has made me less arrogant. I strive to keep my ego in check, to flow with the sounds and images, and to analyse far less. I still tend to overthink things, but that's toned down, from immersing myself in John's music and letting go of obligation and fear.
See his song lyrics at the following URL:
From Amazon.com, about To Record Only Water For Ten Days:
John Frusciante is a creative genius!!!!, May 3, 2001
Reviewer: dearjoan from Columbia, SC
This is the first John Frusciante album that I have purchased, and I had no idea what to expect. I thought it would have a Chili Peppers-esque sound, but Frusciante has picked up a completely different sound. The songs are beautiful; they are an insight into the mind of a man whose thinking is totally unconventional. There is a lot to learn from this creative genius. Right off though, if you're considering purchasing the album, know not to expect a Chili Peppers album, (Chili Peppers rock too, BTW). If you're looking for some real music, honest and substantial, Frusciante's your man. My favourite tracks: "Going Inside", "Someone's", "Away & Anywhere", and "With No One", esp the first track
