A Quote by David Byrne
There's something about music that encourages people to want to know more about the person that made it, and where it was recorded, what year it was done, what they were listening to, and all this kind of stuff. There's something that invites all this obsessive behavior.
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For me, writing music is a way of processing the world. It's not a concrete thing, as in, "This piece is about giraffes." It's much more of an emotional sort of thing. I want people to find something out about themselves through my music, something that was inaccessible before, something that they were suppressing, something that they couldn't really confront.
I didn't really want to write about music very much in 'High Fidelity.' I wanted to write about the relationship stuff, and the music stuff is kind of a bit of fun on top and something to frame it with.
He shook his head. "Some people think that they like music, but they have no idea what it's really about. They're kindding themselves. Then there are people who feel strongly about music, but just aren't listening to the right stuff. They're misguided. And then there are people like me."
"People like you," I said. "What kind of people are those?"
"The kind who live for music and are constantly seeking it out, anywhere they can. Who can't imagine a life without it. They're enlightened."
I always tell people go see something you don't know about. Something you didn't read a ton about on the internet. Something that you don't know what's going to happen because I think that kind of pleasure of finding something new and discovering it, creates a hunger in you.
I'm not a critic, I'm not there to tell people what they should think about something - I just want to kind of enthuse about stuff to let people make their own mind up about it.
Man, that's the only kind of book I like ? one that's so real you want to find out everything there is to know about the person who wrote it, like how tall he is and what kind of music he likes and whether or not he really went through all the stuff he was writing about.
The thing that makes me want to write a piece of music is having something to talk about, you know? Something I want to get across. Because I'm a composer, music is my first language, and that's what I reach for when I want to convey something.
To get large groups of people to dance, there needs to be something accessible about the music. The beat can't be too esoteric, but unless we're talking about prog or etherealist composition, I think there's something simplistic about most music. What's completely insane to me is that people would consider music that's simple to be dumbed-down. Couldn't simplicity be a deliberate, smart choice? Those people aren't really listening; they're judging a song off of a beat, off of a pulse.
I grew up listening to AM radio in the '70s and hearing all of that great soul and rhythm and blues music, which definitely influenced the way I sing. But singing gospel has made me a much more humble person. There are so many people who were geniuses who only a few people knew about when they were alive.
I’m curious about things that people aren’t supposed to see—so, for example, I liked going to the British Museum, but I would like it better if I could go into all the offices and storage rooms, I want to look in all the drawers and—discover stuff. And I want to know about people. I mean, I know it’s probably kind of rude but I want to know why you have all these boxes and what’s in them and why all your windows are papered over and how long it’s been that way and how do you feel when you wash things and why don’t you do something about it?
Competitive people, especially in sports, want to learn about everything. So when you're interested in something, you become a bit obsessive. You start to research it and ask questions about it, and before you know it, you have a serious hobby because of how you're programmed.
I want people to feel good about listening to this [Delta Machine] record, to get some kind of peace. It's just got something magical about it.
I'm more interested in talking about what I do. And I don't think people are interested in my personal life. I've never had a Hollywood life. I've always been a worker. But it's true: If you know something about a person outside of the movie that is really repulsive to you, it's hard to shake. So I prefer to do my speaking through the work. I don't want people to know anything about me, because that's not important. I'm more interested in the me that takes shape through these characters. The other stuff is personal and too easy to trivialize out of context.
We don't live in the old world. But I don't want everyone to know what I've done. We all know every kind of example we could throw out there. The world we see online is very spiteful, we all know about people who have had bad stories thrown at them. If we were more generous I might be more happy about the reputation economy.
People just want to know something, anything. It's all the stuff you never want to talk about, the private stuff.
I want my music to be something that people use in order to access parts of themselves. So in that sense, every piece I write is about all emotions at once, about the lines in between. It's never only about one thing or another. It's emotionally getting at those things that we can't really describe - things for which we don't have labels. So yes, it's about something, and it has a use. It's neither about nothing nor about something concrete - it's about what you bring to it as a listener.
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