Creativity Quote by Arto Lindsay

Restlessness is the engine here, but it’s not the romantic kind. Lindsay frames artistic change as an almost tactical move: go “most extreme,” go deliberately “different,” and do it with eyes open. The phrase “just had this notion” plays coy, like inspiration wandered in off the street, yet he immediately undercuts that looseness with “very consciously.” That tension is the point. In experimental music, spontaneity is a pose; discipline is what makes the rupture land.

The context matters: “Mars” isn’t a planet, it’s a reference point - a prior project, scene, or band chemistry he’s trying not to be swallowed by. When he says “we were all very close,” it reads as affection and warning. Closeness can harden into a shared aesthetic, a group gravity that keeps everyone orbiting the same ideas. So the “extreme thing” isn’t only about sound - it’s a social decision, a way to escape the comfort of belonging without having to denounce it. He’s not rejecting collaborators so much as refusing the narrative that intimacy requires continuity.

The subtext is an artist managing identity in public. To stay legible, musicians are often pushed to repeat the version of themselves that audiences and peers recognize. Lindsay’s language insists on agency: difference isn’t an accident, it’s a boundary he sets. Extremity becomes a form of self-preservation, proof that closeness won’t turn into creative custody.