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David Byrne being interviewed by the fantastic Stephen Colbert:
Colbert: I have a theory about artists … that they are afraid of being ordinary … because they mistake ordinary for what is common between all people … but artists think they can’t want that because it’ll make them like ordinary people.
Byrne: It’s a kind of neurosis that you have to be … that you can’t like ordinary things.
It reminds me of something I was reading recently about ‘cool’ — can’t remember where. About coolness being a non-place – a place of absence — in which the things one can’t do (in order to save face as a ‘cool person’) overwhelm the spirit of listening and attention, and the possibilities of what one can do.