Byrne talking

Rosie Swash “David Byrne, more than just a Talking Head” http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/aug/13/david-byrne-bicycle-diaries

少し前の記事だが、デヴィッド・バーンへのインタヴュー記事。
先ずは、バーンの著書Bicycle Diariesの話。それは”a series of accounts of Byrne's experiences travelling to cities around the world”。

"My travels mainly take me to cities. The book is not about biking across the Lake District or Utah," says Byrne on a spectacularly sunny afternoon in a quiet cafe in the city of Ghent, Belgium. He has his bike with him, of course, and plans to cycle to the other side of town to visit an exhibition in a converted mental institution later that afternoon. "To some extent," he says of the book, "it's about the surface that presents itself to us in cities, and I dig a little bit deeper than the surface."

Swashさんはバーンのこの本を村上春樹と比較している――”It has a meditative quality, reflecting the way Byrne lets "the unconscious and subconscious thoughts bubble up" as he cycles around Berlin or New York or San Francisco, and it presents itself as a sort of love affair with cycling in much the same way Murakami extolls the virtues of long-distance running.”
また、倫敦でのサウンド・インスタレーション、” Playing the Building”*1の話。
そして、トーキング・ヘッズ再結成拒否について；

"I tend to think it's about the listener of a certain age trying to recapture a moment in their youth, and hoping that we can help them rekindle whatever they felt at a particular moment. And I think, that's not my job. That's not what I do." Asked whether he considers those formative years in Talking Heads a happy time, he appears surprised by the question. "Actually no. I wasn't miserable, but I wasn't particularly happy. I was driven and obsessive and socially isolated, which in the end worked fine for getting me to stay home and write things and work on records. But it didn't make me particularly cheery."

引用した最初の部分は、バンドの再結成一般についてずばり本質を衝いている感じがする。
Everything That Happens Will Happen Today*2で、Remain in Light以来のコラボレーションをしたブライアン・イーノについて；

"He calls himself a non-musician even though he can play really well," says Byrne of Eno. "But he plays as a non-musician, which allows him to step back and not get wrapped up in the technique of fingering or chords. He can see the big picture, the structure, the texture of it. I'm able to think of music as texture as opposed to chord progressions, which is not a typical approach for a musician but I think it's often the way people hear things. So that works out pretty well."

Everything That Happens Will Happen Today (HQCD盤) [歌詞対訳・解説・ボーナストラック収録・国内盤] (BRC218)

Remain in Light

Swashさんは Everything That Happens Will Happen Todayが”Home”という曲から始まっていることに引っかけて、「ホーム」こそがバーンの音楽の潜在的な主題だという；

That this most recent album kicks off with a song called Home is striking, because the idea of home, what it means, where it is and whether it is a place of comfort or alienation, is a subject that has haunted Byrne's music since the beginning. It is at the centre of the most famous Talking Heads song, Once in a Lifetime – "And you may tell yourself, this is not my beautiful house!" – and it is the first word sung – "Home, it's where I want to be" – in arguably their best song, This Must be the Place. When asked about this ongoing theme, Byrne laughs. "I know, I keep doing that! I guess it's a way of asking who you are. Who I am? Is this where I belong? Am I comfortable here? Because a home isn't just the house you live in but the psychological space you make for yourself. I think it's all that. I guess it's a way of asking myself over and over again, 'Are you all right now?'"

Speaking in Tongues

デヴィッド・バーンの自らの「ホーム」に対する屈折した感情と「郊外への軽蔑」；

Geographically speaking, home for Byrne is still New York, where he moved in the 70s. But perhaps the question of home keeps coming up because Byrne describes his childhood upbringing in Maryland as breeding in him a "disdain for the suburbs". In contrast to the way cities stimulate his mind, Byrne displays boredom and unease when he finds himself in suburbia.

*1:https://www.roundhouse.org.uk/whats-on/productions/playing-the-building--3268

*2:See http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20090309/1236622473 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20090330/1238350475