Time & Perspective Quote by Mike Figgis

There is something almost defiantly unromantic about Figgis describing creativity as “holding onto little musical sketches.” No tortured-muse myth, no lightning bolt of inspiration - just a private archive of scraps, saved on the hunch they’ll matter later. That choice of language matters: “sketches” implies speed, imperfection, and a willingness to leave things unfinished until the right project arrives. It’s a director talking like a working musician, and it quietly collapses the prestige hierarchy between “film” as a grand canvas and “music” as mere accompaniment.

The intent is pragmatic: he’s outlining a method for scoring that’s closer to composting than composing. Time isn’t the enemy of originality here; it’s the engine. Each film becomes both a demand and a training ground, adding to a growing personal vocabulary. The subtext is a rebuttal to the idea that every score must be invented from scratch to be authentic. Figgis is defending reuse, iteration, and the slow accumulation of craft - not as shortcuts, but as the only sustainable way to make art inside an industry built on deadlines.

Contextually, it fits Figgis’s hybrid identity: a filmmaker with a musician’s instincts, known for work that blurs performance and narrative, improvisation and structure. “The more time that I spend doing them for each film” reads like a quiet confession about repetition: the job keeps coming, so you build a reservoir. Creativity becomes less a moment of purity than a practice of attention - noticing what you’ve already made, and learning when it’s ready to serve the story.