Time & Perspective Quote by Iris DeMent

DeMent’s line lands like a confession that’s also a boundary. In a culture that treats “good taste” as a kind of social currency, admitting you don’t listen to much music risks sounding incurious, even heretical for a musician. She disarms that judgment with the plainest possible reason: time. The sentence is built on a blunt trade-off, and that’s the point. Creativity here isn’t a mystical channel you tap between playlists; it’s a job that consumes the hours other people spend “discovering” artists.

The subtext is quietly corrective. We romanticize musicians as omnivorous fans, always steeped in influences, always processing the canon. DeMent implies that immersion can become interference. Listening isn’t just pleasure; it’s input that can crowd out your own voice or trigger comparison when you’re trying to write. Her “honestly” signals awareness of the taboo, while “my own music” re-centers authorship: the labor is personal, solitary, and not easily outsourced to inspiration.

Context matters: DeMent’s work is rooted in stark storytelling and emotional directness, a style that often reads as unfiltered. This quote carries that same plainspoken ethos. It also pushes back on the modern expectation that artists must perform fandom publicly - cite references, build playlists, stay “current.” DeMent’s stance is almost radical in its refusal to curate a listening identity. She’s saying the studio is not a streaming service; it’s a closed room where attention is the scarce resource, and protecting it is part of the craft.