Creativity Quote by Ikue Mori

There is a whole career arc hiding inside Mori's offhand shrug. "I was playing in other rock bands" sounds like the expected apprenticeship story, the rite of passage where you pay your dues. Then she undercuts it with a blunt, almost comic anticlimax: "Any of those bands didn't last long". The phrasing has the feel of someone speaking across languages and scenes, which actually sharpens the point. It's not polished nostalgia; it's a clipped report from the road.

The intent is quietly revisionist. Rock history loves the myth of the stable lineup grinding toward destiny. Mori offers the opposite: impermanence as the default, not the exception. Those bands "didn't last" because many bands don't; but for a musician who would help redefine New York's downtown noise and improvisation worlds, the line reads like an accidental manifesto. If the container keeps breaking, you stop fetishizing the container.

Subtext: she isn't mourning. There's no romance about "the ones that got away", no ego about being too good for them. It's a practical portrait of scene life, especially for an artist moving through male-coded rock ecosystems where longevity can depend on gatekeeping, money, and tolerance for chaos. The real continuity isn't the band; it's the musician's momentum and curiosity.

Context matters: Mori's path from punk-rooted beginnings toward experimental electronics makes this feel less like failure and more like necessary shedding. Short-lived bands become prototypes. The instability is the training, the churn that pushes her toward a practice that doesn't require a permanent unit to exist.