One of the benefits of playing to small audiences in small clubs for a few years is that you're allowed to fail.
Interpretation
Small audiences provide a safe space for failure and growth.
David Byrne highlights the importance of performing in intimate settings where artists can experiment and learn from their mistakes without the pressure of large audiences. This experience fosters personal and professional growth, enabling artists to refine their craft and build confidence before facing larger crowds.
In practice
In a workshop about performance art, you could say, 'As David Byrne said, one of the benefits of playing to small audiences is that you're allowed to fail, which is where growth happens.'
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.
People pay a million dollars to be recognized, but nobody cares about them. They cared about me because I did things other men were afraid to do. That's why my fans identified with me.
Maybe if I didn't have the talent in chess I'd find the talent in something else. The only thing I know is that I have talent in chess, and I'm satisfied with that.
An idea isn't worth that much. It's the execution of the idea that has value. If you can't convince one other person that this is something to devote your life to, then it's not worth it.
If you're lucky enough to have been rewarded in life to the degree that I have, there comes a point at which you have to decide whether to become a slave to your net worth by devoting the rest of your life to increasing it or to let what you've accumulated begin to serve you.
Success is a great deodorant. It takes away all your past smells.
I think the ability to hit - some guys have it and some guys don't - but I think how dedicated you are to trying to get the most out of yourself, I think kind of determines how good you are and for how long. I was born with the ability to hit, but my work ethic has taken it to the next level.
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