Creativity Quote by Eric San

Eric San’s quote captures that queasy moment when the romance of an artistic “scene” curdles into office politics. The stammering self-correction - “conspiring, well, not conspiring against each other” - is the tell. He’s trying to be fair, but his instincts have already clocked the vibe: people aren’t collaborating so much as managing angles, information, and proximity. “Cloak and dagger” is intentionally melodramatic, which is what makes it land; he’s pointing to behavior that feels absurdly high-stakes for something that’s supposed to be about music.

The intent reads like a quiet refusal. San isn’t naming villains; he’s naming a system. In creative communities, especially ones built around credibility and scarcity (limited gigs, limited press, limited “cool”), secrecy becomes currency. You don’t have to “conspire against” anyone to create an environment where everyone’s guarded, strategic, and slightly paranoid. That’s the subtext: the competition is ambient, not declared. It lives in side chats, selective invites, and the careful curation of who knows what, when.

“What is this?” is the punchline and the protest. It’s a musician’s version of calling time-out on the performance of networking. The line frames intrigue as misaligned with the supposed purpose of the culture: making things, not maneuvering. It also hints at disillusionment with adulthood creeping into art - the realization that scenes can replicate the same soft power games as any workplace, just with better playlists.