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.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that reality is more imaginative and poetic than scientific logic may indicate.
David Byrne expresses the idea that the essence of the world transcends scientific rationality and is instead rooted in metaphor, rhythm, and patterns, much like poetry. He implies that life possesses a dreamlike quality that resonates with creativity and emotional depth, highlighting that understanding our existence requires an appreciation for its artistic and irrational facets.
In practice
In a discussion about the nature of reality at a poetry reading.
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.
To the extent that the judicial profession becomes the daily routine of deciding cases on the most secure precedents and the narrowest grounds available, the judicial mind atrophies and its perspective shrinks.
What greater grief than the loss of one's native land.
An appeal to fear never finds an echo in German hearts.
If you haven't wept deeply, you haven't begun to meditate.
In itself and in its consequences the life of leisure is beautiful and ennobling in all civilised men's eyes.
Violent men have not been known in history to die to a man. They die up to a point.
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