People are already finding ways to make their music and play it in front of people and have a life in music, I guess, and I think that's pretty much all you can ask.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of pursuing one's passion for music and sharing it with others.
David Byrne reflects on the essence of living a musical life, indicating that the core desire for artists is to create music and share it with an audience. This sentiment underscores the value of artistic expression and the fulfillment that comes from engaging with the community through music.
In practice
In a speech at a music festival, one might say this quote to inspire aspiring musicians.
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.
I want a storm to come and flood us into a song that no one wrote.
The photograph isolates and perpetuates a moment of time: an important and revealing moment, or an unimportant and meaningless one, depending upon the photographer's understanding of his subject and mastery of his process.
Grain is life, there's all this striving for perfection with digital stuff. Striving is fine, but getting there is not great. I want a sense of the human and that is what breathes life into a picture. For me, imperfection is perfection.
I write from my soul. This is the reason that critics don't hurt me, because it is me. If it was not me, if I was pretending to be someone else, then this could unbalance my world, but I know who I am.
I'd like to be remembered as a premier singer of songs, not just a popular act of a given period.
The moment a man begins to talk about technique that's proof that he is fresh out of ideas.
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