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There Was An Op-ed Piece In The New York Times By An Evolutionary Biologist Or Somebody - Which Was A Curious Place For The Opinion To Come From - And He Said That There's No Such Thing As A Completely Free, Uncensored Medium, That People Censor Themselves All The Time, In Deference To Hurting Other People's Feelings, Or Offending Other Groups, Or In Their Own, Not To Provoke A Fight. And You Do Self-censor Certain Things, And It's Not Necessarily A Bad Thing. That's Just The Way Human Social Interaction Works.

-David Byrne

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There Was An Op-ed

David Byrne

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There Was An Op-ed Piece In The New York Times By An Evolutionary Biologist Or Somebody - Which Was A Curious Place For The Opinion To Come From - And He Said That There's No Such Thing As A Completely Free, Uncensored Medium, That People Censor Themselves All The Time, In Deference To Hurting Other People's Feelings, Or Offending Other Groups, Or In Their Own, Not To Provoke A Fight. And You Do Self-censor Certain Things, And It's Not Necessarily A Bad Thing. That's Just The Way Human Social Interaction Works.

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People In Latin America... Love America From Afar And Emulate America In Some Ways But Also Hate A Lot Of Things That America Does To Them.

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I Don't Think I Have Grand Visions That I Will Never Achieve.

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

I Like To Combine The Dramatic Emotional Warmth Of Strings With The Grooves And Body Business Of Drums And Bass.

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.

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Often I Don't Know What The Song Means Until It's Finished. Sometimes Months Later. I Don't Think That's Bad. It Implies That I Don't Know What I'm Doing But-i Think If You're Able To Follow Your Instincts, Then That's Knowing What You're Doing.

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The Two Biggest Self-deceptions Of All Are That Life Has A 'meaning'and Each Of Us Is Unique.

Facts Are Simple And Facts Are Straight. Facts Are Lazy And Facts Are Late. Facts All Come With Points Of View. Facts Don't Do What I Want Them To. Facts Just Twist The Truth Around. Facts Are Living Turned Inside Out.

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.

Sometimes The European And North American Public Like Some Things To Be Exotic And Kept At Arm's Length. They Don't Want Sometimes To Know That Foreign Artists Are Doing Something That's At Least As Relevant As What's Being Done Here.

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I've Changed My Music From Time To Time So I'm Hoping That I Can Completely Change My Life From Time To Time, Too. Like Live In Another Land, In Another Place, And Just Get Completely Soaked Up In Another Way Of Being. Could Be In This Country Or Another Country, Somewhere Were You Can Be Reborn A Number Of Times Not Just Creatively, But Personally As Well. I Guess I Want To Go Through Life As More Than One Person.

When Things Get So Absurd And So Stupid And So Ridiculous That You Just Can't Bear It, You Cannot Help But Turn Everything Into A Joke.

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?

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Window To The Soul

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A Dissection Of Music Perception And Creation That Starts Slowly And Inexorably Builds To A Grand Finish. I Loved Reading That Listening To Music Coordinates More Disparate Parts Of The Brain Than Almost Anything Else--and Playing Music Uses Even More! Despite Illuminating A Lot Of What Goes On This Book Doesn't "spoil" Enjoyment- It Only Deepens The Beautiful Mystery That Is Music.

Some Things, I Feel Like No, I Never Could Have The Depth Of Experience Of Their Own Music And Culture - But Sometimes If I'm Collaborating With Somebody, They're Interested In Me Bringing My Own Stuff Into Their Thing, And Sometimes That Works.

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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.

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

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A Bike Is The World's Most Used Form Of Transportation

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There's A Great Temptation To Clean Everything Up And Make Everything More Perfect. You Have To Know When To Stop And Stop Doing It, Or You Might End Up With Something That Sounds Metronomic.

Physical Contact Is A Human Necessity.

I Knew I Wanted To Have A Doll Of Myself On The Cover. I Thought, I Wanna See Myself As A Ken Doll.

I Try To Write About Small Things. Paper, Animals, A House... Love Is Kind Of Big. I Have Written A Love Song, Though. In This Film, I Sing It To A Lamp.

We Don't Make Music, It Makes Us

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When You Fall In Love, You Feel Like A Missing Piece Of A Puzzle That's Been Found.

Falling In Love

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.

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I Still Feel Like If I Can Get A Song To Work With, Say, A Basic Beat, A Rhythm, Some Chord Changes, And A Melody, A Vocal Melody - If It Works With That, Then I Feel It's Written And There's Something There. So I Intentionally Don't Get Involved With Arranging Stuff Or Fussing Over The Sounds And The Edits And The Beats Too Much, At Least Not In The Beginning, Because I Feel Like Then You Can Fool Yourself That You've Got Something There, When You Might Not.

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

From What I've Heard, Paris Did A Little Bit More Prep Work As Far As Making Bike Lanes And All Of That Stuff. They Really Did It Properly, Which New York Is Getting To Little By Little.

Suburban Houses And Tin Sheds Are Often The Objects Of Ridicule.

Yeah, It's Pretty Hard Not To Be Completely Cynical These Days.

Living "in" A Story, Being Part Of A Narrative, Is Much More Satisfying Than Living Without One. I Don't Always Know What Narrative It Is, Because I'm Living My Life And Not Always Reflecting On It, But As I Edit These Pages I Am Aware That I Have An Urge To See My Sometimes Random Wandering As Having A Plot, A Purpose Guided By Some Underlying Story.

My Take Is That The Kind Of Complexity Which Says We Can Always Generate Complexity From Simple Interactions Following For Example Rules.

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.

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

Technology Has Altered The Way Music Sounds, How It’s Composed And How We Experience It. It Has Also Flooded The World With Music. The World Is Awash With (mostly) Recorded Sounds. We Used To Have To Pay For Music Or Make It Ourselves; Playing, Hearing And Experiencing It Was Exceptional, A Rare And Special Experience. Now Hearing It Is Ubiquitous, And Silence Is The Rarity That We Pay For And Savor.

There Are Plenty Of People Who Are, I Think, Completely Racist Who Love Hip-hop.

As I Define It, Rock And Roll Is Dead. The Attitude Isn't Dead, But The Music Is No Longer Vital. It Doesn't Have The Same Meaning. The Attitude, Though, Is Still Very Much Alive - And It Still Informs Other Kinds Of Music.

I Think Sometimes I Get Carried Away, Like I'm Speaking To An Imaginary Audience Rather Than Just Trying To Figure Something Out For Myself. Ideally, I Try To Balance That - That I'm Asking These Questions Of Myself, How Does This Work, Why Does This Happen, What's Going On Here.

This Ain't No Party, This Ain't No Disco, This Ain't No Fooling Around.

I'm Afraid That Everything Will Get Homogenized And Be The Same

Always Be Skeptical About Simplicity.

Things Fall Apart, It's Scientific.

Frank Lloyd Wright... His Things Were Beautiful But Not Very Functional.

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

Yeah, I Like To Keep Myself Interested - I'll Kind Of Throw Myself Into Some Area That I Don't Completely Know Or Understand, That I'm Not Adept At, So I'm Forced To Swim In Order To Stay Afloat. There's A Good Feeling That Comes From That.

I Find Rebellion Packaged By A Major Corporation A Little Hard To Take Seriously.

There's A Pervasive Feeling That When Somebody Sings A Song And Records A Song On A Record, That It's Their True Feeling.

That's The One For My Tombstone... Here Lies David Byrne. Why The Big Suit?

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

Life Tends To Be An Accumulation Of A Lot Of Mundane Decisions, Which Often Gets Ignored.

Television Sounded Really Different Than The Ramones Sounded Really Different Than Us Sounded Really Different Than Blondie Sounded Really Different Than The Sex Pistols

Yeah, Anybody Can Go In With Two Turntables And A Microphone Or A Home Studio Sampler And A Little Cassette Deck Or Whatever And Make Records In Their Bedrooms.

...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.

Real Sadness Is Such An All-encompassing Intense Thing That It Takes You Out Of Your Humdrum Existence. If You Can Still Function, You Want To Show It While It's Peaking. So When People Tell You To Cheer Up, It's Not Always The Best Thing.

Do I Wear A Helmet? Ugh. I Do When I'm Riding Through A Precarious Part Of Town, Meaning Midtown Traffic. But When I'm Riding On Secure Protected Lanes Or On The Paths That Run Along The Hudson Or Through Central Park - No, I Don't Wear The Dreaded Helmet Then.

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

You Can Know Or Not Know How A Car Runs And Still Enjoy Riding In A Car.

I Don't Like Begging Money From Producers.

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.

The More You Know, The More You Know You Don't Know And The More You Know That You Don't Know.

Cycling Can Be Lonely, But In A Good Way.

I Didn't Have Any Agenda Or Plan When I Started Writing Stuff.

Obviously, You Go Through A Lot Of Emotional Turmoil In A Divorce.

Emotional Turmoil

I Couldn't Take Pictures Of Green Rolling Hills.

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

The Assumption Is That Your Personal Life Has To Be A Mess To Create, But How Much Chaos Can You Allow In Before It Takes Over?

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

When Everything Is Visible And Appears To Be Dumb, That's When The Details Take On Larger Meanings.

Deep Down, I Know I Have This Intuition Or Instinct That A Lot Of Creative People Have, That Their Demons Are Also What Make Them Create.

Software Constraints Are Only Confining If You Use Them For What They're Intended To Be Used For.

When It Became Easy Enough To Do Dairy Online, Then I Just Thought, "oh, I'll Start Doing This. I'll Put The Parts Online That Aren't Going To Get Me In Trouble. I'll Save The Rest For Myself." It Became Also This Kind Of Self-therapy. I Could Write About Stuff That Was Bothering Me, Or Personal Stuff. And The Very Personal Stuff I Could Edit Out. But It Was Kind Of The Catharsis Of Getting It Out And Writing About It, That Made Me Think, "okay, I See Why People Do This, Why They Keep These Diaries." So I Thought, "well, Let's See What Happens When I Post Some Of It."

A Lot Of That Worked Itself Out In The Recording.

The Heads Were The Only Band On That Scene That Had A Groove.

With A Lot Of What We Take To Be True Feelings, Especially On Pop Records, We Feel Them Because They're Cleverly Crafted. And Because The Words Are Written By Somebody Who Knows How To Craft Words And Draw On Those Things And Convey Those Feelings. That Doesn't Mean They're Dishonest. But It Also Doesn't Mean That It's All Just Pure Primitive Emotion Spilling Out.

I Don't Care How Impossible It Seems.

Powerpoint May Not Be Of Any Use For You In A Presentation, But It May Liberate You In Another Way, An Artistic Way. Who Knows.

London's Tempo Is 122.86 Beats Per Minute.

I've Noticed A Lot Of Younger Artists Have Less Fear Of Doing Different Sorts Of Things, Whether It's Various Types Of Music, Or Gallery Artists Moving Between Video And Sculpture And Drawing.

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