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We’re going through this super-uptight era, which I think comes entirely from literacy, actually. It’s the result of machines that were designed as word processors being used for making music.

Brian Eno

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
Music in itself carries a whole set of messages which are very, very rich and complex, and the words either serve to exclude certain ones or point up certain others.
BRIAN ENO

Certain Messages Rich
Everybody is entertained to death.
BRIAN ENO

Death Entertained Everybody
We have two different ways of working. One is completely unstructured where somebody just starts playing and somebody joins in and then the other person joins in, and something starts to happen. That’s occasionally what happens.
BRIAN ENO

Mean Moving Play Playing Somebody
I can see the use and value of religion, just as I can see the use of mud wrestling, yoga, astronomy and sadomasochism. but I reject the idea that you can’t be a deep human being without it or any of them.
BRIAN ENO

Ideas Wrestling Yoga
The texture suggests some kind of mood, and the mood suggests some kind of lyric. That’s like working in reverse, often quite the other way around, from sound to song. Although often they stop before they get to the song stage.
BRIAN ENO

Although Around Suggests Tecture Way
Admirers can be a tremendous force for conservatism.
BRIAN ENO

Admirer Conservatism Force
My lyrics are generated by various peculiar processes. Very random and similar to automatic writing.
BRIAN ENO

Peculiar Process Writing
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
I think we’re about ready for a new feeling to enter music. I think that will come from the Arabic world.
BRIAN ENO

Feelings Thinking World
Lyrics are always misleading because they make people think that that’s what the music is about.
BRIAN ENO

Music People Thinking
I still do mostly listen to CDs. I think that every format really is a different way of listening. If you take a different sort of psychological stance to it – like, I think the transition from vinyl to CD definitely marked a difference in the way people treated music.
BRIAN ENO

Cds Difference Thinking
As soon as you externalize an idea you see facets of it that weren’t clear when it was just floating around in your head.
BRIAN ENO

Clear Floating Ideas
Of course, like anybody I repeat myself endlessly, but I don’t know that I’m doing it, usually.
BRIAN ENO

Courses Knows Repeats
I do sometimes look back at things I’ve written in the past, and think, ‘I just don’t remember being the person who wrote that.’
BRIAN ENO

Looks Past Thinking
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

We’re going through this super-uptight era, which I think comes entirely from literacy, actually. It’s the result of machines that were designed as word processors being used for making music.

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Popular Authors

We’re going through this super-uptight era, which I think comes entirely from literacy, actually. It’s the result of machines that were designed as word processors being used for making music.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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