I certainly agree that putting everything into little genres is counterproductive. You're not going to get too many surprises if you only focus on the stuff that fits inside the box that you know.
Interpretation
Limiting oneself to specific genres restricts creativity and discovery.
David Byrne's quote highlights the drawbacks of confining oneself to established genres, arguing that such limitations can stifle creativity and prevent the enjoyment of unexpected experiences. By encouraging a more open-minded approach to art and music, he advocates for exploration beyond familiar boundaries, suggesting that true inspiration often lies outside the 'box' of genre classifications.
In practice
In an art class, to emphasize the importance of exploring various styles, a teacher might quote this to inspire students.
Forces that you might think are utterly unrelated to creativity can have a big impact. Technology, obviously, but environment, too. Even financial structures can affect the actual content of a song. The making of music is profoundly affected by the market.
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.
You create a community with music, not just at concerts but by talking about it with your friends.
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.
I find rebellion packaged by a major corporation a little hard to take seriously.
We don't make music, it makes us
Unfortunately, moral beauty in art - like physical beauty in a person - is extremely perishable. It is nowhere so durable as artistic or intellectual beauty. Moral beauty has a tendency to decay very rapidly into sententiousness or untimeliness.
I don't feel there are enough women artists out there who are saying anything of tremendous relevance.
I am writing for myself and strangers. This is the only way that I can do it. Everybody is a real one to me, everybody is like some one else too to me. No one of them that I know can want_x000D_ to know it and so I write for myself and strangers.
And music has always been incredibly cathartic for me, whether it's writing my own stuff or singing other people's music; it's very freeing.
Grain is life, there's all this striving for perfection with digital stuff. Striving is fine, but getting there is not great. I want a sense of the human and that is what breathes life into a picture. For me, imperfection is perfection.
When you have a large space to conquer, the curve is the natural solution.
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