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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.David Byrne
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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.David Byrne
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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.David Byrne
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It's a bit like sympathetic magic in a way: the usual Western presumption that 'primitive' rituals mimic what they desire to achieve--that phallic objects might be believed to increase male potency and playacting rainfall might somehow bring it about. I am suspicious of such obvious connections and I suspect that the connections among things, people, and processes can be equally irrational. 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.David Byrne
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Complete freedom is as much curse as boon; freedom within strict and well-defined confines is, to me, ideal.David Byrne
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In musical performances one can sense that the person on stage is having a good time even if they're singing a song about breaking up or being in a bad way. For an actor this would be anathema, it would destroy the illusion, but with singing one can have it both ways. As a singer, you can be transparent and reveal yourself on stage, in that moment, and at the same time be the person whose story is being told in the song. Not too many kinds of performance allow that. .David Byrne
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I like a good story and I also like staring at the sea-- do I have to choose between the two?David Byrne
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You might say that the universe plays the blues.David Byrne
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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.David Byrne
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In the early days, I might have gotten on stage and begun to sing as a desperate attempt to communicate, but now I found that singing was both a physical and emotional joy. It was sensuous, a pure pleasure, which didn't take away from the emotions being expressed–even if they were melancholic. Music can do that; you can enjoy singing about something sad.David Byrne
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Recordings aren't time sensitive. You can hear the music you want whether it's morning, noon, or the middle of the night. You can "get into" clubs virtually, "sit" in concert halls you can't afford to visit, go to places that are too far away, or hear people sing about things you don't understand, about lives that are alien, sad, or wonderful. Recorded music can be ripped free from its context, for better and worse. It becomes its own context.David Byrne
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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.David Byrne
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The online music magazine Pitchfork once wrote that I would collaborate with anyone for a bag of Doritos.David Byrne
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Music written by teams makes the authorship of a piece indistinct. Could it be that when hearing a song written by a team, a listener can sense that they aren't hearing an expression of a solitary individual's pain or joy, but that of a virtual conjoined person? Can we tell that an individual singer might actually represent a collective, that he might have multiple identities? Does that make the sentiments expressed more poetically universal? Dan eliminating some portion of the authorial voice make a piece of music more accessible and the singer more empathetic? .David Byrne
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Any kid will tell you that, yes, their music is both an escape and a survival mechanism, and that sometimes the music givesbthem hope and inspiration. It doesn't just placate and pacify.David Byrne
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Music eats its young and gives birth to a new hybrid creature.David Byrne
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According to the science writer Philip Ball, when it was pointed out to musicologist Deryck Cookethat Slavic and much Spanish music use minor keys for happy music, he claimed that their liveswere so hard that they didn’t really know what happiness was anyway.David Byrne
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It was a uniform that signified that one was a kind of downtown aesthete; not necessarily nihilistic, but a monk in the bohemian order.David Byrne
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There's always room for Jell-ODavid Byrne
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I don't care how impossible it seems.David Byrne
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There are two conversations going on at the same time: the story and a conversation about how the story is being told.David Byrne
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A soap opera character on the bar TV says, "You killed him, you smothered him with doughnuts! " Another character, another scene--she is sitting in a room with a man and an elderly woman--the leas character wonders if she's dead. The man says, No, you're alive, " and the other woman hands her a plate of doughnuts. A commercial comes on. A couple are on a date and the woman's voice-over articulates interior thoughts of what a wonderful guy her friend has set her up with: "He's so cute, and his IQ is higher than my bank balance . . but she didn't tell me he has . Tourette's syndrome.David Byrne
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Everyone was doing that in their own way, rejecting things and moving on. It's just a part of discovering who you are; it's nothing special.David Byrne
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There's a good chance that you might be inspired by ideas that originate outside of yourself.David Byrne
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One forgets that part of one's performance is one's history–or sometimes the lack of it. You're playing against what an audience knows, what they expect. This seems to be true of all performers; there's baggage that gets carried into the venue that we can't see.David Byrne
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I pick up a copy of Newsweek on the plane and immediately notice how biased, slanted, and opinionated all the U.S. newsmagazine articles are. Not that the Euro and British press aren't biased as well--they certainly are--but living in the United States we are led to believe, and are constantly reminded, that our press is fair and free of bias. After such a short time away, I am shocked at how obviously and blatantly this lie is revealed--there is the 'reporting' that is essentially parroting what the White House press secretary announces; the myriad built-in assumptions that one ceases to register after being somewhere else for a while. The myth of neutrality is an effective blanket for a host of biases.David Byrne
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The radio was shouting at you, pleading with you, and seducing you.David Byrne
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Simplicity is a kind of transparency in which subtle nuances can have outsize effects.David Byrne
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But at times words can be a dangerous addition to music – they can pin it down. Words imply that the music is about what the words say, literally, and nothing more. If done poorly, they can destroy the pleasant ambiguity that constitutes much of the reason we love music. That ambiguity allows listeners to psychologically tailor a song to suit their needs, sensibilities, and situations, but words can limit that, too. There are plenty of beautiful tracks that I can’t listen to because they’ve been “ruined” by bad words – my own and others. In Beyonce's song "Irreplaceable, " she rhymes "minute" with "minute, " and I cringe every time I hear it (partly because by that point I'm singing along). On my own song "Astronaut, " I wrap up with the line "feel like I'm an astronaut, " which seems like the dumbest metaphor for alienation ever. Ugh.David Byrne
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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.David Byrne
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Powerpoint presentations are a kind of theater, a kind of augmented stand-up. Too often it's a boring and tedious genre, and audiences are subjected to the bad as well as the good.David Byrne
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I like to combine the dramatic emotional warmth of strings with the grooves and body business of drums and bass.David Byrne
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Punk was defined by an attitude rather than a musical style.David Byrne
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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?David Byrne
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The true face of smoking is disease, death and horror - not the glamour and sophistication the pushers in the tobacco industry try to portray.David Byrne
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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.David Byrne
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My favorite time of day is to get up and eat leftovers from dinner, especially spicy food.David Byrne
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It's not always been a happy marriage. I guess I wanted a quick fix.David Byrne
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To some extent I happily don't know what I'm doing. I feel that it's an artist's responsibility to trust that.David Byrne
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I read the NY Times but I don't trust all of it.David Byrne
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Real beauty knocks you a little bit off kilter.David Byrne
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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.David Byrne
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You can know or not know how a car runs and still enjoy riding in a car.David Byrne
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I never listen to the radio unless I rent a car.David Byrne
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There's a certain amount of freedom involved in cycling: you're self-propelled and decide exactly where to go. If you see something that catches your eye to the left, you can veer off there, which isn't so easy in a car, and you can't cover as much ground walking.David Byrne
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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.David Byrne
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I don't listen to the radio very much, but that could be because I don't have a car.David Byrne
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Why not invest in the future of music, instead of building fortresses to preserve its past?David Byrne