David Byrne makes music so beautiful that I want to quit making it myself because there is no way that I could ever do what he does. I saw him tonight, kinda. I could only see him on the monitors outside the Prospect Park bandshell, but I could hear him. Oh yeah. He sounds and moves like the 23 year old guy in the Talking Heads, except he's 57 now and wears white suits to match his white hair. How is that even possible? How does he still have it after all these years? I saw him today, and I wanted to quit, just for a little while. I've listened to his new album a lot over the past couple months. It's gorgeous. There's no other way to describe it. Especially a song like My Big Nurse. It's music I want to listen to while sitting on a porch and staring out to the abyss of the Pacific Ocean and drinking a beer poured into a stout glass.
He drew a huge crowd of people. He filled the whole bandshell area, and then that crowd spilled out to the playground area behind the stage, the grassy areas south of the bandshell, the picnic tables to the north, the street to the east that faced the stage, and the grassy area across that street. People sat on blankets, ate sandwiches, stood, contorted, kneeled, sat on other people, sat Indian-style on the streets, grass, seats, makeshift seats and whatever else they could find. And when he started Once in a Lifetime, everyone slowly gathered themselves and stood up to try and dance to it, except the audience is filled with awkward white dancing and the space to do that was nil. A worth effort nevertheless, and at least some hipsters were roused to movement. Beats standing cross-armed and silent any day of the week.
And when we thought we had our fill of humanity, we walked through the park, though it was more like a hurried jaunty wading through the crowds, and we found the subway home.
