Creativity Quote by Daisy Berkowitz

There is a bruised practicality in Berkowitz's phrasing: not fame, not validation, just "exposure" and "attention" - the hard currency of an industry that treats bands like touring accessories until they prove they're not. The line reads like a backstage aside, the kind musicians trade when they're trying to sound matter-of-fact about a moment that probably felt enormous. A "stint" with Nine Inch Nails isn't framed as artistic communion; it's framed as a leveraged placement, a borrowed spotlight that can either burn you up or finally make the room look your way.

The intent is clear-eyed: to mark a turning point without romanticizing it. Berkowitz acknowledges the mechanics of credibility in 90s alternative culture, where proximity to a dominant act functioned as both endorsement and marketing. NIN, already a magnet for press and a certain kind of industrial-cathartic mystique, operated like a cultural amplifier: touring beside them didn't just put you in front of bigger crowds, it put you into a narrative journalists already cared about.

The subtext is the quiet indignity of needing that adjacency. "We got" suggests something received rather than earned, which is honest but also revealing: attention is dispensed by gatekeepers, not purely generated by merit. Berkowitz is naming the trade-off many artists recognize and rarely admit aloud: sometimes the art isn't what opens the door. It's whose hallway you're allowed to stand in.