David Byrne "Which Way Is Better?"
On Sunday I went to see David Byrne talking with New Yorker magazine critic Burkhardt Bilger as part of this year's The New Yorker Festival.
The interview focused mainly on Byrne's path to becoming the musician, composer and producer that he is today. But it took a few interesting turns along the way, including diversions about art school, bicycles and grandfathering.
Byrne was born in Scotland and as a small child moved with his parents first to Canada, then America. This slightly immigrant/outsider status allowed him to see from an early age the different ways of doing things, and the benefits of being able to ask “Which way is better?"
Byrne equated his musical development to a life-long art project, throughout which he kept asking himself “Which way is better?”
It started in junior high school, in Baltimore, splicing tapes on a tape recorder (“very hard to listen to”).
Then, during his college days at RISD, it was all about guitar proficiency (“practicing and performing as much as possible”).
From there he just kept going.
Through his first band The Artistics, to The Talking Heads, to starting-up record label Rei Momo, to many ensemble projects, and finally to his current broadway show called American Utopia (“it is about appreciation, the antidote to cynicism”).
A new interest he discovered in himself while working on American Utopia is interpersonal communication. How does it work? Where should he insert a pause when speaking to inflect meaning? Where should he look when delivering a line? Should he script or improvise?
He contrasted these choices that we make when we are together with other people face-to-face, with disposable communication forms like social networking and text messaging, which he dismissed as “narrowband”.
On most topics, Byrne was thoughtful and serious in his delivery, but from time to time he would pause after one of Bilger’s questions to laugh to himself before answering. This was both humanizing and endearing.
So was his anecdote about pushing his young grandchild around Greenwich Village in a baby carriage, thinking “does this compromise me as an artiste?”
At the end of the interview, there was time for questions from the audience. So I went to the microphone and asked one.
“Music is obviously number one for you, but I believe you are also interested in bicycles. Can you tell us about that? Where did that interest come from?"
He looked right at me, and then talked for several minutes about how it started back in his CBGB days. There were no taxis in the lower east side then. So if he wanted to see an art show, listen to a band, and then go for something to eat, a bicycle was the most-efficient way to do it.
Then he skipped-forward to Mayor Bloomberg’s transportation commissioner Jannette Sadik-Kahn, and her idea for green bicycle lanes networking across the city. All it took was some paint, an intention to change things, and a lot of bravery.
His answer reminded me that although his career has taken him around the world, New York City is an essential part of who David Byrne is.
His question "Which way is better?” is still repeating in my mind. It’s an A/B test for improving things.
https://festival.newyorker.com/tickets/david-byrne-talks-with-burkhard-bilger/
