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Music Is Relegated To An Underground, Relatively Obscure Group Of Listeners. It's Partly Because Of The Nature Of The Medium. With A Piece Of Visual Art, You Can Look At Something Ugly, Brutal And In Your Face, But It's Kind Of - There It Is. It Doesn't Take You Over In The Same Way That Putting On The Music At A Certain Volume Does.

-David Byrne

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Music Is Relegated To

David Byrne

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Music Is Relegated To An Underground, Relatively Obscure Group Of Listeners. It's Partly Because Of The Nature Of The Medium. With A Piece Of Visual Art, You Can Look At Something Ugly, Brutal And In Your Face, But It's Kind Of - There It Is. It Doesn't Take You Over In The Same Way That Putting On The Music At A Certain Volume Does.

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For Years We Have Been Taught Not To Like Things. Finally Somebody Said It Was Ok To Like Things. This Was A Great Relief. It Was Getting Hard To Go Around Not Liking Everything.

There Are A Lot Of People That Don't Scour Websites Regularly Or Read Music Reviews. They Need Whatever, The Other Kinds Of Stuff, Whether It's An Appearance On Lettterman Or Posters Or Ads. They Need To Kind Of Be Hit More In The Face And Be Told That There's Something New Out There.

I'm Not Suggesting People Abandon Musical Instruments And Start Playing Their Cars And Apartments, But I Do Think The Reign Of Music As A Commodity Made Only By Professionals Might Be Winding Down.

One Of The Benefits Of Playing To Small Audiences In Small Clubs For A Few Years Is That You're Allowed To Fail.

Maybe It's Naïve, But I Would Love To Believe That Once You Grow To Love Some Aspect Of A Culture-its Music, For Instance -you Can Never Again Think Of The People Of That Culture As Less Than Yourself. I Would Like To Believe That If I Am Deeply Moved By A Song Originating From Some Place Other Than My Own Homeland, Then I Have In Some Way Shared An Experience With The People Of That Culture. I Have Been Pleasantly Contaminated. I Can Identify In Some Small Way With It And Its People.

There's Still A Feeling That Uncensored Emotions Make A Good Song. They Don't. Pure Emotion Is Just Somebody Screaming At You, Or Crying. It Doesn't Communicate Anything. It Has To Be Mediated With Some Skill And Craft, In Order To Communicate It To A Second, A Third, Or A Fourth Person. That Doesn't Make It Any Less Real. And It Doesn't Make It Any Less True. But It Does Mean That, Yeah, It's The Combination That Makes It Work.

I Couldn't Talk To People Face To Face, So I Got On Stage And Started Screaming And Squealing And Twitching.

I Love Writing. I Don't Claim To Be Great At It. Occasionally I Get A Good Sentence Off. But I Love The Activity.

I'm Really Curious How The Private Listening - Ipods, People Listening On Their Phones - How That Might Eventual Effect Music. There'll Be A Whole Genre Of Music That Really Works On A Kind Of One To One Headphone Or Earbud Level But Doesn't Really Work When You Play It In A Room.

Something About Music Urges Us To Engage With Its Larger Context, Beyond The Piece Of Plastic It Came On-it Seems To Be Part Of Our Genetic Makeup That We Can Be So Deeply Moved By This Art Form. Music Resonates In So Many Parts Of The Brain That We Can't Conceive Of It Being An Isolated Thing.

We Don't Make Music, It Makes Us

My Personal Feeling Is That Human Beings Have This Incredible Capacity For Denial.

Rich People Will Travel Great Distances To Look At Poor People.

I Subscribe To The Myth That An Artist's Creativity Comes From Torment. Once That's Fixed, What Do You Draw On?

I'm Just Wearing Regular Street Clothes. Pretty Much All The Time. In The Summertime, Or When It Gets Warm Out, Shorts And Sandals Or Something Like That. Stuff That I Don't Mind Getting A Little Sweaty.

It's A Fundamental, Social Attitude That The 1% Supports Symphonies And Operas And Doesn't Support Johnny Learning To Program Hip-hop Beats. When I Put It Like That, It Sounds Like, 'well, Yeah,' But You Start To Think, 'why Not, Though?' What Makes One More Valuable Than Another?

Schools Are For Training People How To Listen To Other People.

My Opinion Is That Somebody Certainly Has The Right To Do Cartoons That Make Fun Of Somebody Else's Religion. But To Reprint Them Just To Provoke A Fight And Just To Provoke It Like Thumbing Your Nose At Someone Else And Going, "what Are You Gonna Do About It?"

Metal Buildings Are The Dream That Modern Architects Had At The Beginning Of This Century. It Has Finally Come True, But They Themselves Don't Realize It. That's Because It Doesn't Take An Architect To Build A Metal Building. You Just Order Them Out Of A Catalog - Comes With A Bunch Of Guys Who Put It Together In A Couple Of Days, Maybe A Week. And There You Go - You're All Set To Go Into Business - Just Slap A Sign Out Front.

...if Photos Can Reproduce The World More Perfectly Than Any Painter, Can Capture An Instant, A Look, A Gesture, Then What Makes A Painting Good Anymore? Painting Subverts This Subversion Of Its Traditional Nature By Redefining Itself - Art Is Idea, Not Simply Skillful Execution. So, A Work Can Be Crudely Made, Or Even Machine Made - But It Has To Be Practically And Functionally Useless.

When Everything Is Worth Money, Then Money Is Worth Nothing.

There's Still A Feeling That Uncensored Emotions Make A Good Song. They Don't. Pure Emotion Is Just Somebody Screaming At You, Or Crying. It Doesn't Communicate Anything.

Analysis Is Like A Lobotomy. Who Wants To Have All Their Edges Shaved Off?

Most Of Our Lives Aren't That Exciting, But The Drama Is Still Going On In The Small Details.

Why Not Invest In The Future Of Music, Instead Of Building Fortresses To Preserve Its Past?

I'm Being Probably Naïve, But I Would Like To Think That Once Something Moves You And You Have An Emotional Involvement With It, And You See Some Relevance In It To Your Own Life, Then It's A Little Bit Harder, Maybe, To Look At The People That Produced It As Being Just Exotic Others That Don't Have Any Connection To You Or Relevance To You.

Punk. . .was More A Kind Of Do-it-yourself, Anyone-can-do-it Attitude. If You Only Played Two Notes On The Guitar, You Could Figure Out A Way To Make A Song Out Of That, And That's What It Was All About.

I've Been In Beautiful Landscapes Where One Is Tempted To Whip Out A Camera And Take A Picture. I've Learned To Resist That.

I Resent The Implication That I'm Less Of A Musician And A Worse Person For Not Appreciating Certain Works.

I Don't Think People Are Going To Switch Over To Bikes Because It's Good For Them Or Because It's Politically Correct. They're Going To Do It Because It Gets Them From A To B Faster.

I've Rarely Seen Video Screens Used Well In A Music Concert.

I Found Music To Be The Therapy Of Choice.

I Love Getting Out Of My Comfort Zone.

Having Unlimited Choices Can Paralyze You Creatively.

It's Like 60 Minutes On Acid.

Sometimes I Write Stuff That Strangely Predicts What's Going To Happen In My Life.

Everything's Intentional. It's Just Filling In The Dots.

I Have Something To Say About The Difference Between American And European Cities, But I Forgot What It Was. I Have It Written Down At Home Somewhere.

The Imminent Demise Of The Large Record Companies As Gatekeepers Of The World's Popular Music Is A Good Thing, For The Most Part.

I've Rarely Kept My Distance From Kind Of - I Don't Know If We Can Call It Politics, But Kind Of, Civic Engagement And That Kind Of Thing, Except I Tended To Think, 'well, Do It Yourself Before You Start Telling Other People What They Should Be Doing.'

In The Future, Women Will Have Breasts All Over. In The Future, It Will Be A Relief To Find A Place Without Culture. In The Future, Plates Of Food Will Have Names And Titles. In The Future, We Will All Drive Standing Up. In The Future, Love Will Be Taught On Television And By Listening To Pop Songs.

Physical Contact Is A Human Necessity.

I'm Afraid That Reason Will Triumph And That The World Will Become A Place Where Anyone Who Doesn't Fit That Will Become Unnecessary

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Johannes Kepler

William Ellery Channing

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