Why not invest in the future of music, instead of building fortresses to preserve its past?
Interpretation
Investing in future creativity is more beneficial than clinging to past achievements.
David Byrne's quote emphasizes the importance of innovation and progress in the arts, particularly music. Instead of focusing on protecting and preserving past traditions, he advocates for investing in new ideas and creativity that can shape the future of music, suggesting that growth and evolution are essential for artistic vitality.
In practice
During a lecture about the evolution of music, this quote can highlight the importance of embracing new genres.
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.
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.
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.
Music is never stationary; successive forms and styles are only like so many resting-places - like tents pitched and taken down again on the road to the Ideal.
I don't have a therapist, so I use me as my own therapist when I'm making the music.
Writers write these male stereotypes, and it makes it ten times more interesting if a woman says the lines.
Why would somebody just read a novel when they can see it on TV or in the cinema? I really have to think of the things fiction can do that film can't and play to the strengths of the novel. With a novel, you can get right inside somebody's head.
For your information, a good novel can change the world. Keep that in mind before you attempt to sit down at a typewriter. Never waste time on something you don't believe in yourself.
The kind of writing that matters most to me is something you don't learn about. It's constantly coming out of what I don't know rather than what I do know.
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