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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."

-David Byrne

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When It Became Easy

David Byrne

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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."

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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.

It's More About The Stuff You Think About When You're Getting From Place To Place On A Bicycle Than It Is About Actually Riding The Bicycle.

The Very Best [infographics] Engender And Facilitate An Insight By Visual Means - Allow Us To Grasp Some Relationship Quickly And Easily That Otherwise Would Take Many Pages And Illustrations And Tables To Convey. Insight Seems To Happen Most Often When Data Sets Are Crossed In The Design Of The Piece - When We Can Quickly See The Effects On Something Over Time, For Example, Or View How Factors Like Income, Race, Geography, Or Diet Might Affect Other Data. When That Happens, There's An Instant "aha!".

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

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.

I Can't Tell One From The Other:i Find You Or You Find Me?there Was A Time Before We Were Born If Someone Asks, This Is Where I'll Be.

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

We've Gone Through The Urban Renewal Cycle In The '60s And '70s That Really Did A Lot Of Damage To The Fabric Of Urban Life - Neighborhoods Bulldozed And Highways Pushed Through, And All That Kind Of Stuff That Really Destroyed The Kind Of Social Underpinning And The Kind Of Mom And Pop Stores And All The Stuff That Makes A Community Viable.

I Don't Care How Impossible It Seems.

I Sense The World Might Be More Dreamlike, Metaphorical, And Poetic Than We Currently Believe--but Just As Irrational As Sympathetic Magic When Looked At In A Typically Scientific Way. I Wouldn't Be Surprised If Poetry--poetry In The Broadest Sense, In The Sense Of A World Filled With Metaphor, Rhyme, And Recurring Patterns, Shapes, And Designs--is How The World Works. The World Isn't Logical, It's A Song.

The Making Of Music Is Profoundly Affected By The Market.

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

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

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.

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."

On A Bike, Being Just Slightly Above Pedestrian And Car Eye Level, One Gets A Perfect View Of The Goings-on In One's Own Town.

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 Noticed That When I Am Selling A Lot Of Records, Certain Things Become Easier. I'm Not Talking About Getting A Table In A Restaurant.

I Wave To The Double-decker Buses From My Bike, But The Passengers Never Wave Back. Why? Am I Not An Attraction?

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.

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.

What's Been Missing From Digital Music Sales Has Been The Possibility Of Added Depth. In A Printed Package One Can Only Include So Many Images And So Much Text - For Example - But Digitally It's Wide Open. For The Most Part At The Moment We Get Less Information For Slightly Less Money - Though We Could Be Getting A Lot More.

We Are Like The Birds. We Adapt. We Sing.

Probably The Reason It's A Little Hard To Break Away From The Album Format Completely Is, If You're Getting A Band Together In The Studio, It Makes Financial Sense To Do More Than One Song At A Time. And It Makes More Sense, If You're Going To All The Effort Of Performing And Doing Whatever Else, If There's A Kind Of Bundle.

With Pop Music, The Format Dictates The Form To A Big Degree. Just Think Of The Pop Single. It Has Endured As A Form Even In The Download Age Because Bands Conform To A Strict Format, And Work, Often Very Productively, Within The Parameters.

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?"

I Couldn't Take Pictures Of Green Rolling Hills.

You Create A Community With Music, Not Just At Concerts But By Talking About It With Your Friends.

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.

Maybe This Is All A Bit Of A Myth, A Willful Desire To Give Each Place Its Own Unique Aura. But Doesn't Any Collective Belief Eventually Become A Kind Of Truth? If Enough People Act As If Something Is True, Isn't It Indeed "true," Not Objectively, But In The Sense That It Will Determine How They Will Behave? The Myth Of Unique Urban Character And Unique Sensibilities In Different Cities Exists Because We Want It To Exist.

Creative Work Is More Accurately A Machine That Digs Down And Finds Stuff, Emotional Stuff That Will Someday Be Raw Material That Can Be Used To Produce More Stuff, Stuff Like Itself - Clay To Be Available For Future Use.

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

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.

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

I'd Been Keeping Tour Diaries, And Especially When I Go Somewhere Where I Felt The Experience Might Be Interesting, Like Eastern Europe Or South America Or Whatever, Where The Whole Perception Of What I Was Doing There And Stuff That I Was Seeing And Music I Was Hearing, I Could Put All That Into A Diary.

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.

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

Science's Job Is To Map Our Ignorance.

To Shake Your Rump Is To Be Environmentally Aware.

So There's No Guarantee If You Like The Music You Will Empathize With The Culture And The People Who Made It. It Doesn't Necessarily Happen. I Think It Can, But It Doesn't Necessarily Happen. Which Is Kind Of A Shame.

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

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.

The Arts Don't Exist In Isolation.

There's An Old Joke That You Know You're In Heaven If The Cooks Are Italian And The Engineering Is German. If It's The Other Way Around You're In Hell.

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.

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.

Cycling Is A Joy And Faster Than Many Other Modes Of Transport, Depending On The Time Of Day. It Clears The Head.

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

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

Falling In Love

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 Don't Believe That Crime, Danger And Poverty Make For Good Art. That's Bullshit.

I Found Music To Be The Therapy Of Choice.

It's Like 60 Minutes On Acid.

A Lot Of Cities Are Making A Real Effort, Neighborhood By Neighborhood, To Make Themselves Into A Place Where Life Can Be Pretty Good.

Body Odor Is The Window To The Soul.

Window To The Soul

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.

A Lot Of That Worked Itself Out In The Recording.

We Do Express Our Emotions, Our Reactions To Events, Breakups And Infatuations, But The Way We Do That - The Art Of It - Is In Putting Them Into Prescribed Forms Or Squeezing Them Into New Forms That Perfectly Fit Some Emerging Context. That’s Part Of The Creative Process, And We Do It Instinctively; We Internalize It, Like Birds Do. And It’s A Joy To Sing, Like The Birds Do.

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

I Think That If They Want People To Listen To Ten Or Twelve Songs, They Have To Give The Listener A Reason To Listen To Ten Or Twelve Songs Or To Buy Ten Or Twelve And Listen To The Whole Thing Instead Of Just Pulling One Or Two For Their Ipod Or Their Computer.

I Always Think The Everyday Is More Relevant Than Anything Too Grand Because We All Have To Deal With It.

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.

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

People Will Remember You Better If You Always Wear The Same Outfit.

I Like A Good Story And I Also Like Staring At The Sea-- Do I Have To Choose Between The Two?

As Music Becomes Less Of A Thing--a Cylinder, A Cassette, A Disc--and More Ephemeral, Perhaps We Will Begin To Assign An Increasing Value To Live Performances Again.

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.

People Will Do Odd Things If You Give Them Money.

When We Started, A Lot Of Bands Sounded Really Different From One Another.

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

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.

London's Tempo Is 122.86 Beats Per Minute.

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'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.

Sometimes It's A Form Of Love Just To Talk To Somebody That You Have Nothing In Common With And Still Be Fascinated By Their Presence.

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.

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.

Things Fall Apart, It's Scientific.

It's Not Always Been A Happy Marriage. I Guess I Wanted A Quick Fix.

My Favorite Time Of Day Is To Get Up And Eat Leftovers From Dinner, Especially Spicy Food.

I Don't Like Begging Money From Producers.

Interviewer: If I Gave You Fifty Dollars, Right Now, What Would You Do With It?david Byrne: I Would Get Something To Eat.

Punk Was Defined By An Attitude Rather Than A Musical Style.

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

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.

We Don't Make Music, It Makes Us

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

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?

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?

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

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

There's Something About Music That Encourages People To Want To Know More About The Person That Made It, And Where It Was Recorded, What Year It Was Done, What They Were Listening To, And All This Kind Of Stuff. There's Something That Invites All This Obsessive Behavior.

What's Been Missing From Digital Music Sales Has Been The Possibility Of Added Depth. In A Printed Package One Can Only Include So Many Images And So Much Text - For Example - But Digitally It's Wide Open.

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.

I'd Like To Be Known For More Than Being The Guy In The Big Suit.

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.

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

I Came To New York To Be A Fine Artist - That Was My Ambition.

Another Elvis Will Not Come Along. He Got Wasted, But It's Alright.

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

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

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

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

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

I Try To Devote My Afternoons To Making Music In My Home Studio, But It's A Lot More Fun Hanging Out With Musicians And Friends, And Trying Subtly To Influence A Band Than Making Your Own Stuff.

I’m Not All About Money, But, Like Most Musicians, I Am About Survival.

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

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.

Real Beauty Knocks You A Little Bit Off Kilter.

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.

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

To Some Extent I Happily Don't Know What I'm Doing. I Feel That It's An Artist's Responsibility To Trust That.

It Seemed [there Are] Musical Nodes On The Planet Where Cultures Meet And Mix, Sometimes As A Result Of Unfortunate Circumstances, Like Slavery Or Something Else, In Places Like New Orleans And Havana And Brazil. And Those Are Places Where The European Culture And Indigenous Culture And African Culture All Met And Lived Together, And Some New Kind Of Culture And Especially Music Came Out Of That.

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

I Think It's Really Hard To Make Songs That Pursue An Agenda. You Can Kind Of Do It A Little Bit Through A Character, So The Character Gives Voice To Something Or Their Story, The Story Of The Character Tells You Something, But, For Me Anyway, It's Really Hard To Write Directly About Politics.

I've Been Asking Myself: 'why Put Together These Things - Cds, Albums?' The Answer I Came Up With Is, Well, Sometimes It's Artistically Viable. It's Not Just A Random Collection Of Songs. Sometimes The Songs Have A Common Thread, Even If It's Not Obvious Or Even Conscious On The Artists' Part.

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.

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

Physical Contact Is A Human Necessity.

We're On A Road To Nowhere, Come On Inside. Takin' That Ride To Nowhere, We'll Take That Ride. I'm Feelin' Okay This Mornin', And You Know, We're On The Road To Paradise, Here We Go, Here We Go.

The Better A Singer's Voice, The Harder It Is To Believe What They're Saying.

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.

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.

I Try Never To Wear My Own Clothes, I Pretend I'm Someone Else

Cycling Can Be Lonely, But In A Good Way.

I Really Enjoy Forgetting. When I First Come To A Place, I Notice All The Little Details. I Notice The Way The Sky Looks. The Color Of White Paper. The Way People Walk. Doorknobs. Everything. Then I Get Used To The Place And I Don't Notice Those Things Anymore. So Only By Forgetting Can I See The Place Again As It Really Is.

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

People Are Renovating Places And Opening Ambitious New Venues. That's One Thing That Music Does. It Gets People Out Of Their Houses, And Gets Them Hanging Out Together.

The Most Common Music That You Hear Anywhere In The World Now Basically Has Its Roots In That Union That Happened In The Last Century, Or In The Century Before That. That Kind Of Music That's Groove Or Beat Oriented Just Didn't Exist In Lots Of Cultures Before That.

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.

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.

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

Emotional Turmoil

You May Say To Yourself: "well, How Did I Get Here?"

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.

People Hear About Stuff From Their Friends Or A Magazine Or A Newspaper.

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

I'm No Lance Armstrong, But I Do Use A Bike To Get From Place To Place In Manhattan, A Little Bit Of Brooklyn.

As Everything Becomes Digitized, There's The Idea That Things That Can't Be Digitized Become More Valuable.

I Love Getting Out Of My Comfort Zone.

Personally, Being Somewhat Envious Of Richard's (thompson) Songwriting And Guitar Playing, It's Somewhat Satisfying He's Not Yet Achieved Household-name Status. It Serves Him Right For Being So Good.

A Little Touch Of Chaos And Danger Makes A City Sexy.

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.

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.

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.

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.

By The Time Talking Heads Were Starting, My Feeling Was To Throw Out Everything And Start From Scratch Onstage; Strip It Down To As Close To Zero As You Can Get And Then You Can Make It Yours.

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

Human Beings Have The Incredible Capacity For Denial. I Think They Do. And Although It's Really Hard To Believe, I Have My Doubts. But My Feeling Is That First They Have To Convince Themselves. First They Have To Justify This Stuff To Themselves And If They Can Do That, Even For Just The Moment That It's Coming Out Their Mouth, Then They Can Kind Of Mouth It With Kind Of Believable Sincerity, Even If Some Of Us.

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

I Have Trouble Imagining What I Could Do That's Beyond The Practicality Of What I Can Do.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.'

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.

Always Be Skeptical About Simplicity.

If Anything, A Lot Of Electronic Music Is Music That No One Listens To At Home, Hardly. It's Really Only To Be Heard When Everyone's Out Enjoying It.

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

I Am An Immigrant With A Green Card And, Therefore, I Am Not Eligible To Vote In A Federal Election.

Having Unlimited Choices Can Paralyze You Creatively.

Singing Is A Trick To Get People To Listen To Music For Longer Than They Would Ordinarily.

The Wage For Most Musicians Is A Modest Amount, And That Includes Me Some Of The Time.

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

If I'm Feeling That I Have An Angle Or Something To Say Or Something Where In A Way I'm Having A Conversation With Myself, That's Immensely Pleasurable.

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

With Music, You Often Don't Have To Translate It. It Just Affects You, And You Don't Know Why.

Ninety Percent Of All Music Is Always Crap, And When Too Many People Decide They're Going To Have Guitar Bands, Then Ninety Percent Of Them Are Going To Be Crap. It's Just A Given Law.

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.

There's More Good Music Being Made Now Than Ever Before.

...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.

Crime Is A Job. Sex Is A Job. Growing Up Is A Job. School Is A Job. Going To Parties Is A Job. Religion Is A Job. Being Creative Is A Job

Book Learning, Or Intelligence Of One Sort, Doesn't Guarantee You Intelligence Of Another Sort.you Can Behave Just As Stupidly With A Good College Education.

I'm Just An Advertisement For A Version Of Myself.

Well, Marx Is Having A Comeback. I Hear Him Mentioned A Lot In Terms Of The Global Financial Situation And The General Sense Of Injustice Out There. A Lot Of Economic Experts In America Refer To Him Without Actually Using The M Word, But He's Around.

It's Not Music You Would Use To Get A Girl Into Bed. If Anything, You're Going To Frighten Her Off.

I Wanted To Be A Secret Agent And An Astronaut, Preferably At The Same Time.

People Use Irony As A Defense Mechanism.

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

The World Isn't Logical, It's A Song.

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.

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 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.

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

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

My Favorite Term For A New Kind Of Performance Is "security Theater." In This Genre, We Watch As Ritualized Inspections And Patdowns Create The Illusion Of Security. It's A Form That Has Become Common Since 9/11, And Even The Government Agencies That Participate In This Activity Acknowledge,off The Record, That It Is Indeed A Species Of Theater.

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