David Byrne- Strange Ritual

Faber, London 0571177212

We spend years learning how the wires are connected. We must eventually learn, by rote, that pulling on this particular string, as odd as it seems, will connote happiness, and this string, which our guts tell us denotes fear and anger, will, to the contrary, signal to the outside world a sense of well-being. I often sing with all my might, and I find that all I’ve accomplished is to convey a sense of energy being expended and a desperate need to communicate something. Often, no one is able to figure out exactly what it is I’m trying to communicate. I myself often feel that I’ve touched something deep as my voice rises into a sudden, painful, sharp edge and I assume and hope that the exact same feelings are reconstructed inside the minds and hearts of the listeners, but it isn’t always true. The audience often only watches in puzzlement as I produce a series of nonsensical, confusing, conflicting sounds that somehow they know denote intense emotional states, but they don’t know which ones they are. Just like all our facial expressions, my strings are attached in all the wrong places.