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As struggles go, being an artist isn’t that much of one.

Brian Eno

I had an interesting day. I was in the studio with a group of musicians, who shall remain nameless, and I said to them “Our exercise today is not to use ‘undo’ at all. So, there’s no second takes. Or, if you do a second take, you have to do the whole take.
BRIAN ENO

Exercise Interesting People
When I’ve finally got the title, I think, “Okay, yes, now I know where we are. Now I know what it is. Fine, that must be finished or nearly finished.
BRIAN ENO

Fine Thinking Titles
In fact, quite a lot of what I do has to do with sound texture, and, you can’t notate that. You can’t notate the sound of “St. Elmo’s Fire.” There’s no way of writing that down. That’s because musical notation arose at a time when sound textures were limited.
BRIAN ENO

Mean Musical Sound Writing
I despise computers in many ways. I think they’re hopelessly underevolved and overrated.
BRIAN ENO

Computer Thinking Way
If you think of the way a composer or say a pop arranger works – he has an idea and he writes it down, so there’s one transmission loss. Then he gives the score to a group of musicians who interpret that, so there’s another transmission loss.
BRIAN ENO

Down Loss Thinking Transmission Writing
I love the sort of ambivalence of this, the ambiguity of something – being, for instance, in a quite busy Mexican restaurant with one of these very gentle tracks playing I remember as being particularly nice.
BRIAN ENO

Mexican Nice Track
I think the other thing that’s important is getting to a place, which very, very rarely happens with improvising groups, where somebody can decide not to play for a while. You watch any group of musicians improvising together and they nearly all play nearly all the time.
BRIAN ENO

Differences Musician Playing Thinking Watching
The handbook always tells you what it does, and you can be quite sure that if it’s a complex device it can do at least fifteen other things that weren’t predicted in the handbook, or that they didn’t consider desirable. It’s normally those other things that interest me.
BRIAN ENO

Device Easiest Handbook Predicted Things
Because if someone does that, you can find your own position in relation to it: what is it that I don’t agree with? In the studio I want to articulate a position clearly enough so that other people can use it – or chuck it away if they don’t want it.
BRIAN ENO

Enough Position Relation Someone Use
Set up a situation that presents you with something slightly beyond your reach.
BRIAN ENO

Beyond Reach Situation
Once you’ve grown to accept something and it becomes part of the system you’ve inherited, you don’t even notice it any longer.
BRIAN ENO

Accepting Inherited Longer
A big ego isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A big ego means that you have some confidence in your abilities, really, and that you’re prepared to take the risk of trying them out.
BRIAN ENO

Ego Mean Risk
Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting.
BRIAN ENO

Attention Interesting Listening
I thought it was magic to be able to catch something identically on tape and then be able to play around with it, run it backwards; I thought that was great for years.
BRIAN ENO

Play Running Years
Think inside the work – outside the work
BRIAN ENO

Inside Thinking Work
The prospect of music being detachable from time and place meant that one could start to think of music as a part of one’s furniture.
BRIAN ENO

Detachable Furniture Thinking

As struggles go, being an artist isn’t that much of one.

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As struggles go, being an artist isn’t that much of one.

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