Creativity Quote by John Cale

The funniest thing about John Cale pitching Mozart in 1960s New York is how casually he treats it as both ridiculous and inevitable. Mozart is the ultimate shorthand for “genius,” the 60s are the ultimate shorthand for “scene,” and New York is the ultimate shorthand for “collision.” In one breath, Cale sketches a whole alternate history where classical virtuosity doesn’t sit behind glass, it sweats under stage lights, gets chewed up by downtown noise, and maybe comes out sharper.

Cale’s specific intent feels less like a literal logline and more like a self-portrait in disguise. As a Velvet Underground co-founder and an avant-garde lifer, he’s always been interested in what happens when high culture meets the street and neither stays pure. Mozart becomes a proxy for the artist Cale recognizes: brilliant, ambitious, socially awkward, hungry for patronage and attention. Dropping him into the 60s reframes “the classical canon” as just another subculture before it got institutionalized.

Then comes the kicker: “I’ve been reading so many novels.” That’s not a flex; it’s a tell. It’s Cale admitting that music alone doesn’t give him the narrative architecture he wants. Novels are where you steal pacing, character, messiness, and motive. The subtext is restlessness: the musician reaching for story because sound, even at its most experimental, can’t always carry the full psychological freight. This is creativity as genre-hopping survival, not prestige.