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.
Interpretation
In challenging times, humor becomes a coping mechanism to deal with absurdity.
David Byrne's quote suggests that when situations become overwhelmingly absurd or ridiculous, individuals often resort to humor as a way to cope with the chaos. It highlights the idea that laughter can serve as a refuge, allowing one to navigate through difficult circumstances by finding something to laugh about within them.
In practice
In a speech about mental health, a speaker might use this quote to emphasize the importance of finding humor in tough situations.
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.
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.
We don't make music, it makes us
He burned his house down for the fire insurance and spent the proceeds on a telescope.
She was, in fact, quite a pleasant looking girl, even if her bosom had clearly been intended for a girl two feet taller; but she was not Her. The Egregious Professor of Grammar and Usage would have corrected this to "she was not she," which would have caused the Professor of Logic to spit out his drink.
Isn’t it a bit unnerving that doctors call what they do “practice”?
Waiting for the conspiracy theorists to tell the truth is a little like leaving the front-porch light on for Jimmy Hoffa.
You don’t want to ask after the health of anyone, if you’re a funeral director. They think maybe you’re scouting for business.
It is a curious fact, but nobody ever is sea-sick - on land. At sea, you come across plenty of people very bad indeed, whole boat-loads of them; but I never met a man yet, on land, who had ever known at all what it was to be sea-sick. Where the thousands upon thousands of bad sailors that swarm in every ship hide themselves when they are on land is a mystery.
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