Creativity Quote by Santiago Durango

"We don't care about our audiences that much. We just go out and play" sounds like a shrug, but it’s really a mission statement: stop performing approval-seeking theater and return to the blunt, physical act of making noise with other people in a room. Coming from Santiago Durango, a musician tied to a strain of indie/post-hardcore ethos, it reads as a refusal of the customer-service model that quietly colonized live music. The audience isn’t a focus group. The band isn’t a brand doing “engagement.” The job is to play.

The intent isn’t contempt so much as boundary-setting. "That much" is doing the heavy lifting: of course you care enough to show up, tune up, and not waste everyone’s time. But you don’t contort the set to chase applause, you don’t sand down the rough edges to keep the room comfortable, and you don’t let the crowd’s mood become the steering wheel. It’s a defense against the anxiety of being watched, rated, and instantly processed into content. In an era when artists are nudged to treat every gig like a conversion funnel, Durango’s line insists on a different contract: authenticity over accommodation.

Subtextually, it’s also a jab at the idea that art is validated primarily through reception. “We just go out and play” frames music as practice and communion, not performance-as-pleasing. The context is a scene where credibility often comes from not needing to be liked. That posture can be romantic, even strategic, but it also carries risk: indifference can curdle into laziness. Still, the quote works because it’s honest about the power dynamic. The band’s integrity is the product, and it’s not negotiable mid-song.