Talking Heads always pose a threat, even at their most innocuous. Especially at their most innocuous. Love is always the destroyer, everyday duties and routines are what get destroyed. I like how David Byrne spits out "believe" because it sounds like a little bird squeaking, "Beat me" - this, I opine, is no coincidence. Listen to the Talking Heads: you experience a convergence of the adorable and the threatening - Byrne's adorableness is always a vehicle for danger, and it's only when he sounds most threatening that he also sounds sincere. Belief is a beating, or rather, to believe is to ask to be beaten - the two are one and the same.
What is it to love the Talking Heads, then? Does it welcome danger, destruction? Will I miss work tomorrow? Will the stock market crash?
William James teaches us that there is no escaping belief. Talking Heads write false manuals for living, instruction booklets designed to sabotage anyone dumb enough to take their advice. You cannot believe them - you must believe that you don't. You believe that you don't, yet you don't win. You just get beaten another way.
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