It is a wet, dismal Tuesday evening in Williamsburg, Brooklyn but in the cozy Pete’s Candy Store bar spirits are high. As part of the Open City Dialogue (OCD) lecture series that takes place bi-monthly at the bar and features urban eccentrics, the iconic David Byrne graces the small stage ready to enlighten the crowd of eager listeners of all ages on site specific creativity.

Mr. Byrne organized a thorough PowerPoint presentation taking the folks in attendance through a historical chronology of music history; from classical works to the MP3 player, touching on everything from jazz to arena rock in between. His thesis was a simple one -  music is created not by raw emotion, but rather by the venue it is envisioned by the artist to be heard in. He spoke eloquently and with little tinges of humor, while simply trying to unravel a rather complex argument, and engage the crowd to think more deeply about the tunes they put in their ears.

One of my favorite quotes of his from the evening on the definition of art was, “(after some deliberation) Art is something just outside of immediate understanding.” The talk was about 45 minutes long, and followed by a gracious amount of question/answer period. Below is a description of the event in David’s own words:

“What I’m going to talk about is an insight I’ve had about creation. That insight is that the context largely determines what is written, sung or performed. That doesn’t sound like so big of an insight, but it’s actually backwards from what I perceive to be conventional wisdom- which is that creation emerges out of some interior connection or upswelling of passion or feeling that inevitably needs an outlet. I think the passion is there, but it’s largely unconsciously tailored to fit an available context and circumstance.

I’ll use music as an example, as people will believe I know something about that area. I’ll propose that musical styles evolved and genres of music largely get created to fit the acoustics and social space of the places where each kind of music will be heard. Much music would never have been written if the halls and clubs weren’t already there for it to be heard and performed in. That sounds obvious too, but I mean not only would there not be a place to play, but that the specific structure and sound of each kind of music is pre determined as well. I’ll provide pictures and audio examples.

Though music is an easy example for me to use, I have a feeling that this somewhat reverse view of creation happens in a lot, maybe all, areas.”

The OCD lecture series meets every other Monday at Pete’s Candy Store at 7pm.

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