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.
David ByrneRead
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.
Interpretation
External factors such as technology and environment significantly influence creativity.
David Byrne highlights the interconnectedness of creativity and external influences, suggesting that elements like technology, the environment, and financial systems play a crucial role in shaping artistic expression, particularly in music. The quote underscores the idea that creativity is not just an internal process but also a response to various external conditions that can enhance or restrict artistic output.
In practice
In a discussion about how music evolves with technology, you can use this quote to emphasize the influence of external factors.
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.
We don't make music, it makes us
You can’t, if you can’t feel it, if it never Rises from the soul, and sways The heart of every single hearer, With deepest power, in simple ways. You’ll sit forever, gluing things together, Cooking up a stew from other’s scraps, Blowing on a miserable fire, Made from your heap of dying ash. Let apes and children praise your art, If their admiration’s to your taste, But you’ll never speak from heart to heart, Unless it rises up from your heart’s space.
The beauty that addresses itself to the eyes is only the spell of the moment; the eye of the body is not always that of the soul.
I think theater ought to be theatrical ... you know, shuffling the pack in different ways so that it's -- there's always some kind of ambush involved in the experience. You're being ambushed by an unexpected word, or by an elephant falling out of the cupboard, whatever it is.
Not what the mind sees, but what the mind imagines the eye must see.
I write screenplays in the middle of the night.
Most writers - poets in especial - prefer having it understood that they compose by a species of fine frenzy - an ecstatic intuition - and would positively shudder at letting the public take a peep behind the scenes.
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