I mean, just because you’re a musician doesn’t mean all your ideas are about music. So every once in a while I get an idea about plumbing, I get an idea about city government, and they come the way they come.

Garcia pushes back against the assumption that an artist’s thoughts and creative impulses must stay inside their professional lane. The remark treats “ideas” as spontaneous, unruly arrivals—something that happens to a person rather than something neatly chosen or curated. By naming mundane subjects like plumbing or city government, he emphasizes that curiosity and imagination are not confined to art-making; they range across ordinary civic and practical life. Implicitly, the quote also critiques the way audiences and interviewers can reduce musicians to a single identity, expecting them to speak only in the register of music. Garcia asserts a fuller, more human scale of attention and intelligence.