When I’m alone, I work sometimes with music, sometimes without and sometimes just listening to NPR.

Baryshnikov’s remark demystifies artistic labor by describing it in ordinary, contemporary terms: solitude, routine, and the management of attention. By placing NPR alongside music and silence, he suggests that creative work is not sustained by a single “ideal” atmosphere but by flexible listening—sometimes seeking rhythm and emotional charge (music), sometimes seeking clarity (silence), and sometimes seeking a steady stream of language and current events (radio) as a kind of companionable background. The quote also hints at an artist’s need to regulate isolation: being alone can be productive, but it can also be eased by voices from the outside world. Overall, it frames creativity as pragmatic, adaptive, and human.