David Byrne Quotes

“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.”

“How much of the audience’s fun was sacrificed in the effort to redefine the social parameters of the concert hall — it sounds almost mas*chistic of the upper crust, curtailing their own liveliness, but I guess they had their priorities.”

“I also realized that there were lots of unacknowledged theater forms going on all around. Our lives are filled with performances that have been so woven into our daily routine that the artificial and performative aspect has slipped into invisibility.”

“I like a good story and I also like staring at the sea – do I have to choose between the two?”

“I wanted to find a reason not to be cynical — to have some faith even when nothing around me seemed to justify it.”

“It can often seem that those in power don't want us to enjoy making things for ourselves – they'd prefer to establish a cultural hierarchy that devalues our amateur efforts and encourages consumption rather than creation.”

“Johannes Kepler published his book 'Harmonices Mundi' in 1619. In it he proposed that it was the Creator who 'decorated' the whole world, using mathematical and musical harmonic proportions. The spiritual and the physical are united.”

“Music isn't fragile.”

“Music resonates in so many parts of the brain that we can’t conceive of it being an isolated thing. It’s whom you were with, how old you were, and what was happening that day.”

“Musicians sort of knew this already — that the emotional center is not the technical center, that funky grooves are not square, and what sounds like a simple beat can either be sensuous or simply a metronomic timekeeper, depending on the player.”

“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.”

“Performers try harder.”

“Presuming that there is such a thing as 'progress' when it comes to music, and that music is 'better' now than it used to be, is typical of the high self-regard of those who live in the present. It is a myth. Creativity doesn't 'improve'.”

“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.”

“The act of making music, clothes, art, or even food has a very different, and possibly more beneficial effect on us than simply consuming those things. And yet for a very long time, the attitude of the state toward teaching and funding the arts has been in direct opposition to fostering creativity among the general population. It can often seem that those in power don’t want us to enjoy making things for ourselves — they’d prefer to establish a cultural hierarchy that devalues our amateur efforts and encourages consumption rather than creation. This might sound like I believe there is some vast conspiracy at work, which I don’t, but the situation we find ourselves in is effectively the same as if there were one. The way we are taught about music, and the way it’s socially and economically positioned, affect whether it’s integrated (or not) into our lives, and even what kind of music might come into existence in the future. Capitalism tends toward the creation of passive consumers, and in many ways this tendency is counterproductive.”

“The classical players who think all popular music is simple tend not to hear the nuances involved, so naturally they can’t play very well in that style. Simplicity is a kind of transparency in which subtle nuances can have outsize effects. When everything is visible and appears to be dumb, that’s when the details take on larger meanings.”

“The mixtapes we made for ourselves were musical mirrors. The sadness, anger, or frustration you might be feeling at a given time could be encapsulated in the song selection. You made mixtapes that corresponded to emotional states, and they'd be avaliable to pop into the deck when each feeling needed reinforcing or soothing. The mixtape was your friend, your psychiatrist, and your solace.”

“The online music magazine Pitchfork once wrote that I would collaborate with anyone for a bag of Doritos.”

“There are two conversations going on at the same time: the story and a conversation about how the story is being told.”

“There’s a biological basis for music, and that biological basis is the similarity between music and speech. That’s the reason we like music. Music is far more complex than the ratios of Pythagoras. The reason doesn’t have to do with mathematics, it has to do with biology.”

“What begins as a random walk often ends up taking you somewhere, somewhere that you later realise was exactly where you wanted to go.”

“What do we need music to do? How do we visit the land in our head and the place in our heart that music is so good at taking us to?”

“You might say that the universe plays the blues.”