Oct
20th
Mon
20th
There’s a lot of pressure to be modest. And a lot of people [in the indie/punk world] are very shy, and feel if someone’s going to be legitimate or genuine, it can’t be pretentious. But I realized it’s fun to be pretentious. Pretentiousness offers freedom. My concept of pretentiousness isn’t phoniness; it’s just role-playing and not having a fixed identity. I don’t believe it’s possible to be phony. You’re always going to be who you are. Once I accepted that, I realized, “I want to be something fantastic. If I’m gonna create who I am, I don’t want to be this shy, meaningless creature that hasn’t made a splash in the world. I want to be something outrageous and fantastic and inspiring and bizarre.” In my normal life, I’m very down to earth. I watch ESPN and do a lot of boring things nobody would get excited about.
— Kevin Barnes in the new issue of Paste.
