Time & Perspective Quote by Ikue Mori

There’s a quiet brutality in how casually Ikue Mori frames the break: not a grand “I quit,” not a romantic story about artistic evolution, just the plain logistics of a life that no longer contains the thing that once defined it. “So now” lands like a shrug, the sound of time rearranging priorities without asking permission. The line doesn’t dramatize loss; it normalizes it. That’s the sting.

Coming from Mori, the subtext hums louder than the sentence. She emerged from a scene where drums weren’t just an instrument but an identity marker: the physical, public proof of being in the band, of taking up space in a genre that historically policed who got to be loud. Saying she hasn’t “touched the drums” in five years isn’t only about practice. It’s about distance from the whole machinery of performance: rehearsals, venues, gear, schedules, the body-work of hitting things night after night.

The phrasing also hints at a different kind of discipline. Musicians who move into electronics, composition, or studio-driven improvisation often trade the visible grind of practice for less legible labor: listening, programming, editing, collecting sounds, building systems. “Don’t have time” can read as constraint, but it can also be a declaration of focus. She’s not confessing negligence; she’s describing an artistic life where the old tool has become optional, maybe even irrelevant.

It works because it refuses the myth of constant devotion. Instead, it tells the truth most artists rarely admit: careers aren’t linear, and sometimes the instrument you’re known for becomes the one you leave behind.