You Are the Sky

Last night, we went to see David Byrne perform. Boy howdy. What a terrific show, made more terrific by the fact that it was literally the opposite of what I look for in a rock concert. Usually, I want spontaneity. Chaos. Maybe somebody gets stabbed. This wasn’t that. Byrne’s show is the most deliberative concert I’ve ever attended, as close to musical theater as traditional rock.

Byrne has always been as much a visual artist as a musical one. His early work with the Talking Heads is remembered as much for his herky-jerky dancing and hip-to-be-square wardrobe as the songs. Which are, of course, great.

Our friend pointed out that the Talking Heads were at their commercial peak almost 45 years ago, which caused me to reflect that that would have been the equivalent of me going to see the Benny Goodman Orchestra when I was young. And that bummed me right the f out.

Since then, Byrne’s had a fruitful career as a musician, artist, and rock-n-roll eminence gris. (I don’t know if I’m using that term correctly and, frankly, I don’t care. If you ever get the chance to use the term “eminence gris” you take it.)

This is not a “heritage” act. Byrne’s work remains contemporary, relevant, and distinctly his own. The friend with whom we went to the show has been involved in education and educational investment for years; he’s recently been pondering the rise of AI and how to apply it, or not, to human development.

At dinner before the show, he talked about how he’s been asked to give talks to college students about the new work frontier. He said he’s been encouraging students to drop the “achievement model” in favor of the “explorer model,” which emphasizes discovery over mastery. Following the idiosyncratic for its own sake both because it’s joyful and because AI cannot (at least not yet) compete with humans in the realm of being human.

Watching David Byrne last night drove home the dinner conversation. There he is, 74 years old, dressed in an orange jumpsuit surrounded by an extraordinary cast of musicians and dancers, also in orange jumpsuits, seemingly having the time of their lives acting out the complicated origami that is the mind of David Byrne.

It is a mind that, as my wife pointed out, seems eternally joyful. Ok, maybe not “Psycho Killer,” but pretty much everything else. For God’s sake, he sang a song called “My Apartment is My Friend.” While not exactly Mr. Rogers, Byrne made a plea for kindness. “It’s the most punk rock thing you can do right now,” he said.

Which surprised me a little bit. I wasn’t expecting the show to be as political as it turned out to be. Certain artists named David – Bowie was another one – feel like they live outside the ordinary worlds of human affairs. That is, of course, silly. Artists, no matter how quirky, have to share the same space as the rest of us. Even so, I guess I think of David Byrne as fairly apolitical. Not so much.

Byrne never uttered the name of any political official or public policy, but the video screens behind him projected many images of our current domestic miasma. The songs, too, like “Life During Wartime” take on a certain urgency. This ain’t no party. This ain’t no disco, indeed.

Even so, the show makes a compelling case for the power of joy. The joy of community and music. The joy of people connected across all those 45 years. The joy of rediscovering old favorites and discovering new ones. I can’t say “My Apartment is My Friend” is likely to make my regular rotation, but so much other stuff might. I was surprised at how great the David Byrne solo canon is.

Another song about home, called “Everybody’s Coming to My House,” opened the two-song encore. “I’m never going to be alone,” he sings before closing the night with the third in the troika of songs about home, “Burning Down the House,” which tells us to fight fire with fire.

I came home exhilarated. The music and message were great. Also great, though, was seeing my friend’s “Explorer” metaphor deployed to such winning effect. If you get a chance to go hang out with a few thousand folks when David Byrne comes to your town, do it. I hope you leave as recharged as I feel today. Ready to be kind. Ready to be weird. Ready to explore. This ain’t no fooling around.