Art & Creativity Quote by David Gilmour

Gilmour frames musicianship less as performance and more as refuge: a private technology for altering consciousness. The comparison to meditation isn’t mystical posturing; it’s a practical description of how repetition, breath, and attention collapse the noise of ordinary life into a single point. You can hear the ethic behind it: the “different state of mind” is earned through discipline, not gifted by inspiration. Technique becomes a portal.

The subtext is also a quiet defense of escapism, and a careful rebrand of it. “Leaving your troubles behind” could read like denial, but in an era where artists are expected to metabolize their pain into content, Gilmour suggests something older and arguably healthier: music as a temporary suspension of the self. Not self-expression as confession, but self-expression as recalibration. The line implies that the value of art isn’t only what it communicates to an audience; it’s what it does to the maker’s nervous system.

Context matters: Gilmour’s playing with Pink Floyd helped define a kind of spacious, immersive rock that already functions like guided meditation for listeners, built from sustained tones and patient emotional arcs. His quote pulls the curtain back on why that sound resonates. It isn’t about virtuoso fireworks; it’s about immersion. In a culture addicted to constant stimulation, he’s describing flow as a form of relief - and, subtly, as a form of control. When life is unmanageable, you can still choose a key, a tempo, a feeling, and live there for a while.