The Talks
Kilian Jornet: “The best thing is tomorrow”
Mr. Jornet, as a long-distance trail runner and mountain athlete, you’ve ascended hundreds of peaks around the world. When did you first fall in love with the mountains?
It’s been since I was a kid basically, my sister and I grew up in a mountain hut in the Pyrenees. That’s around 2000 meters. My father was a mountain guide and my mother was a teacher, but she was also doing a lot of mountain sports, so we were always outside, playing in the woods, swimming in the river even during the winter. Every evening we were going out in the woods in our pyjamas, it was dark but my mother would turn off the headlamp and say, "Okay, let's get back home and listen to the sounds of the forest.” I remember the first time, we were very scared, sticking so close to my mom, but eventually we knew there was nothing to worry about. It’s just nature, it's plants, animals, it’s the wind… We felt so close to nature. I really appreciated those times as a kid because it was never about climbing or reaching the summit or anything, it was just about being in nature.
You once described that mountain connection as a feeling of being totally yourself, regardless of the location.
My feeling of home is being in the mountains. If I'm in the Pyrenees, I feel at home. If I'm in the Alps, I feel at home. If I'm in the Himalayas, I feel at home. But if I'm at in Barcelona, which is only one hour from where I was born, I really don't feel home. I feel like a foreigner there. But if I go to the mountains, I feel like home no matter where it is. It’s where I can really be myself. We always put on masks on ourselves when we go to places, when we meet people… But for me, it's when I'm in the mountains that I don’t need any mask.
“When you keep yourself open, you just might get to know yourself and know the good things about yourself. And that's why I always come back to songwriting. It's the way I kind of try and make sense of my life.”
“To fight this game alone is actually every day a struggle. Sometimes you are not in the best shape. The biggest thing is that you must find in it a personal happiness.”
“I can’t make people happy if I’m not happy myself. That applies to anyone who tries to achieve something in their life: if you’re not happy, you can’t transfer any happiness”
“Art is about finding creativity in the normal gutter next to you. To see the potential in something where there is no potential in terms of how society sees it is often where art or creativity is a great tool. It’s about making the impossible possible.”
“The thing I’ve gathered more of over the years is a self-confidence that’s to do with having done work that people have liked.”
“I hope the scale of my works is way bigger than what you see. I hope they live in you.”
“I am Valentino. I live in my own world. I love to create clothes, I love beautiful things. If they want to call me an icon, okay, then I am an icon.”
“I discovered early on that I’m the kind of person that experiments and makes mistakes but then it’s all worth it because once in a blue moon it hits home.”
“When you are in a very, very tough moment of a day and have a lot of frustration because nothing is happening right—but you don’t give up—and suddenly that happens! That’s almost a transcendental thing.”
“I just try to live my life and just be who I am. If people really accept me they have to accept me as I am, you know what I mean? My highs and my lows and my vulnerabilities… It's who I am as a human being.”
“We’re going after it. We’re going after what we believe and what we deserve and we’re not taking the back seat anymore. I see an improvement in the way that we as women are standing together and paving the way for the next generations. It’s time for that.”
“I think the mark of a great song, photo or a painting is something you can remember. It’s kind of that simple. If you work at it, there will be times when the intangible becomes tangible and for a moment… You are a wizard.”
“I’ve learned not to look at sales reports. I used to, but if I had listened to sales reports at the beginning, I would have given up on things that are some of our biggest successes now.”
“I have a responsibility that lasts a lifetime with my children. They know that I love my work, and they know how I go about it. And I hope that they find work that they love, because nothing can compare to watching your child succeed.”
“I struggled a lot. That was the reason I became a champion. A lot of people give up, a lot of people feel sorry for themselves. But I didn't.”
“I want to make classical instruments sound unexpected. Constructing it yourself means that you don’t need to do so much so that it sounds like yours. You know it’s the only one. It’s yours. You own the sound.”
“Happiness for me is just being; just being at any given moment. If you are searching for happiness, you are not happy. It’s the pot at the end of the rainbow.”
“People have said that before, “Oh, I'll read a recipe and know it's yours before I see your name on it.” That's the best compliment because I feel like working with food is such an extension of my personality.”
“You better make every moment count. Live your life now; start in the morning. You mustn’t sit around waiting to die.”
“When I was younger I used to have more anxiousness to obtain things. But there are moments in which you obtain those things and then you relax.”
“The guys who are real artists are people who have figured out the art of living; their art is art because they live. They have made living an art, they have made an art of living. They are constantly inputting life as opposed to expressing life.”
“Over the course of my life, I have sacrificed love, private life, and time for me, all on the altar of work. But I have also created an empire that is important for so many.”
“Every time you hear a piece of music that you’ve written, you remember the joy of it. Even if you don’t remember exactly what the writing process was like, there’s a moment where you hear it and your heart is full. It’s a similar emotion like when you are in love with someone, you feel that internal joy.”
“We are consumed with existence, mortgages, jobs, cars, houses. It is nice to allow the imagination room to breathe again and see life as something that is spectacular and magic.”
“I knew what felt instinctively right for me, and I pursued that throughout my entire career. It’s the way I live; it’s the way I work. Everything that I’ve done and everything that I have is an extension of my personal taste.”
“My work is integrated completely into my life and vice-versa – I’ve been working since I was 16. My work is my life and my life is my work. It made me who I am.”
“Somehow at the end of the day doing something that actually resonates with people is quite rewarding and keeps me going.”
“I’m surviving. I do everything I can to speak out and make sure that I keep my humanity.”- “If it sounds right, then I’m happy, no matter how I got there. I just want to make beautiful music.”
“I dreamed of winning the Olympics since I was nine years old. That was definitely the most memorable race of my career. But the next day I woke up, and I wanted to win the next race.”
“I think it comes from my desire as a kid to do something artistic that would amaze people, you know? I wanted to do nothing less than that. Those are the projects that I love: figuring out what might just be possible but hasn't been done yet.”
“I think the final circle in being an artist is connecting, making some conversation to the world you’re in. I think if you have that feeling of why you need to do something, you’ll find a way. And I think that really takes you forward!”- “During my career I was blessed to be able to constantly be motivated and constantly be pushing myself, because otherwise I never would have achieved what I did.”
“I do not consider architecture as art, nor do I consider architects to be artists. However, I do have a strong desire to improve the purity of my expression and put a strong message into my architecture so that I can call it art!”
“Architecture is something that you should be inside and absorbed by. It’s something which convinces you by experience more than impresses you by image.”
“If I pass away one day, I am happy because I tried to do my best. My sport allowed me to do so much.”
“I believe anyway that the prime-time for every work of art exists in the time in which it was done. After that it’s transformation, continuous transformation.”
“I remember driving in New York in 1976 and I put the brakes on quickly because there was the very, very first Vogue cover that I ever shot. Big, on a bus shelter! And I remember just pulling over and just staring at it. At that point it was a real dream to see one of your pictures there. I’d always dreamed of doing a Vogue cover!”
“For me, success is having integrity and really staying true to my own voice. When I was younger, maybe it was more about the big spaces and getting awards. But now I’m prioritizing more this idea of having a beautiful process.”
“I think it’s just been a long slow burn. I’ve worked fairly consistently, and I’m really grateful — even for the years of not getting so many acting jobs because that means I really appreciate being able to do what I love now.”
Tosin Oshinowo: “Respond with your soul”
Ms. Oshinowo, what memories do you most associate with growing up in Lagos, Nigeria?
Growing up in Lagos, we didn't have a lot of toys, so your imagination was your plaything. You could create anything from everything around you. One of my favorite memories is being at my grandmother's house, which is in a very dense part of Lagos, all the children on the street would make kites from the small branches of the palm tree tied with a little bit of nylon. Everyone on the street would have these kites up, and I remember you would find loads of the electrical lines on streets covered in bits of old kites. Everybody was playing these kites, and it's such a happy memory for me. I loved making something from absolutely nothing! Kids would make little cars from tin cans, things like that. You used what you had around you to play.
Do you think that all that time spent looking up at the skyline had some kind of intrinsic impact on your decision to become an architect?
(Laughs) Well, I was always a creative child. I did fine arts in school, painting, drawing… So I was always inclined in this direction. Around age 14 or 15, there is a subject in school called technical drawing, and it was very clear that I seem to have a good understanding and a grasp of it. So I think architecture and art was a natural progression from that. I was a very spatial child, so Lagos was a really fascinating place to grow up. Lagos is very busy, very chaotic. There are a lot of people. Its foundations are as originally a British colony; it was set up as a naval point to enforce the abolition of the slave trade, but it’s become a melting pot for many different ethnic groups in Nigeria. It's the smallest size state in the country. It has only one percent of the whole surface area of Nigeria, but it has 10 percent of the country's population. It’s also an economic hub, it’s a port city so it’s known for trade… It’s a really exciting city for someone interested in architecture.
Nicola Dinan: “Move with the times”
Viviane Sassen: “It takes time to find your voice”
Madeline Woo: “Keep doing what you’re doing”
Gaggan Anand: “I do what I want to do”
Thomas Demand: “That’s all part of the game”
Russell Tovey: “This is for everyone”
Victoria Monét: “Go forth with faith”
Alessandra Sanguinetti: “They live within me”
