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
To be a poet in a destitute time means: to attend, singing, to the trace of the fugitive gods. This is why the poet in the time of the world's night utters the holy.
It’s not a lie. It’s a gift for fiction.
To say of a picture, as is often said in its praise, that it shows great and earnest labour, is to say that it is incomplete and unfit for view.
I've always believed in writing without a collaborator, because where two people are writing the same book, each believes he gets all the worry and only half the royalties.
I am composed of contradictions, which is why poetry is a better form for me than philosophy
The beautiful feeling after writing a poem is on the whole better even than after sex, and that's saying a lot.
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