I don’t work at being ordinary.

Taken at face value, the line is a compact declaration of artistic self-conception: “ordinary” is not a default identity but something one might have to choose—or even labor—to become. The speaker frames distinctiveness as a natural or necessary condition of creative life, implying that originality, ambition, and idiosyncrasy are not affectations but part of how he moves through the world. In a celebrity context, it also reads as a refusal of false modesty: rather than apologizing for exceptional success, the speaker asserts that striving for the average is not his project. The quote’s punch lies in its inversion—making ordinariness the thing that would require effort.