I had an interesting day. I was in the studio with a group of musicians, who shall remain nameless, and I said to them “Our exercise today is not to use ‘undo’ at all. So, there’s no second takes. Or, if you do a second take, you have to do the whole take.
The reason I don’t tour is that I don’t know how to front a band. What would I do? I can’t really play anything well enough to deal with that situation.
What happens with notation is that it reduces things to a language which isn’t necessarily appropriate to them. In the same way that words do, you get a much cruder version of what was actually intended.
So, I try to make signs, graphically and visually, to say to people “Okay, this is this department of my work and this is this other department of my work.” And of course I’m very pleased if people like all of them, but I don’t want them to feel deceived at any point.
When I was working with Talking Heads what would happen typically is that they would go out and start playing a track, and I would always run the tape.
All cultures have these feelings about non-functional areas of activity. And the more time people have on their hands, the more they commit it to those areas.
I’m very good with technology, I always have been, and with machines in general. They seem not threatening like other people find them, but a source of fun and amusement.
