Maybe it's naรฏve, 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.
David ByrneI like to combine the dramatic emotional warmth of strings with the grooves and body business of drums and bass.
David ByrneWe 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. Thatโs part of the creative process, and we do it instinctively; we internalize it, like birds do. And itโs a joy to sing, like the birds do.
David ByrneAll you needed was a couple of instruments and a few chords and you could be on an indie label.
David ByrneI should watch network television, or daytime television, because I'm not sure who all these people are who keep getting referred to in blogs and newspapers. I better get myself culturally attuned.
David ByrneA lot of cities are making a real effort, neighborhood by neighborhood, to make themselves into a place where life can be pretty good.
David ByrneLiving "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.
David ByrneIs giving in to the photographer's presumably natural impulse to compose and light well sometimes okay and not okay other times?
David ByrneMost of our lives aren't that exciting, but the drama is still going on in the small details.
David ByrneMy favorite time of day is to get up and eat leftovers from dinner, especially spicy food.
David ByrneIt'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.
David ByrneIf 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.
David ByrneIf 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.
David ByrneI 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 ByrneI 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.
David ByrneA 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.
David ByrneDo 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.
David ByrneIt's not music you would use to get a girl into bed. If anything, you're going to frighten her off.
David ByrneThere'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.
David ByrneI knew I wanted to have a doll of myself on the cover. I thought, I wanna see myself as a Ken doll.
David ByrneCreative 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.
David ByrneWith 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 ByrneI'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.
David ByrneLife tends to be an accumulation of a lot of mundane decisions, which often gets ignored.
David ByrneWe'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.
David ByrneMy take is that the kind of complexity which says we can always generate complexity from simple interactions following for example rules.
David ByrneTo some extent I happily don't know what I'm doing. I feel that it's an artist's responsibility to trust that.
David ByrneHuman 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.
David ByrneProbably 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.
David ByrneIt didn't even occur to me that I'm the last person in the world who should play salsa or Brazilian music.
David Byrne