Creativity Quote by Robert Wyatt

There is a quiet provocation in Robert Wyatt’s line, the kind that sounds like modesty until you realize it’s also a manifesto. “On the whole” softens the blow, a musicianly hedge that keeps the speaker from sounding like a scold. But the sentence lands with a clear refusal: he’s not building his taste, his standards, or his next move by scanning the room for approval.

Coming from Wyatt, that matters. His career sits in the long, stubborn tradition of British experimental music where belonging is always conditional and trends are just weather. To “not listen to my peers” isn’t anti-community; it’s anti-herd. The subtext is a warning about the feedback loop artists fall into when they treat contemporaries as a scoreboard: you start making work that competes rather than work that communicates. Wyatt frames independence as an ethical choice, not just an aesthetic one.

The most interesting twist is that it’s also an admission of vulnerability. Peers are the most seductive audience because they’re the most fluent in the same codes. Ignoring them can be a way to protect an inner compass from being demagnetized by scene politics, critical fashion, or the anxiety of relevance. In an era where artists are pressured to “keep up” with their cohort in real time, Wyatt’s sentence reads like a small act of resistance: tune your instrument, not your timeline.