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I’m fascinated by musicians who don’t completely understand their territory; that’s when you do your best work.

Brian Eno

When you look back on a historical period of music, it seems so obvious to you what the characteristics of it are, but they’re not obvious at the time. So, when I look back at my own work.
BRIAN ENO

Historical Looks Writing
Rationality is what we do to organize the world, to make it possible to predict. Art is the rehearsal for the inapplicability and failure of that process.
BRIAN ENO

Art Rehearsal World
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
The whole history of pop music had rested on the first person singular, with occasional intrusions of the second person singular.
BRIAN ENO

Firsts Intrusion Occasional
You know that in order to copyright material somebody has to write it down for you. Any piece of recorded material has to be scored in order for it to be copyrighted.
BRIAN ENO

Copyright Giving Writing
People in the arts often want to aim for the biggest, most obvious target, and hit it smack in the bull’s eye.
BRIAN ENO

Arrows Art Eye Smack
Every collaboration helps you grow.
BRIAN ENO

Collaboration Grows Helping
In my normal life I’m a very unadventurous person.
BRIAN ENO

Life Normal Persons
The biology of purpose keeps my nose above the surface.
BRIAN ENO

Biology Noses Purpose
Everything good proceeds from enthusiasm.
BRIAN ENO

Enthusiasm Everything Good
The vinyl commands a certain kind of reverence because it’s a big object and quite fragile so you handle it rather carefully, and it’s expensive so you pay attention to how it’s looked after.
BRIAN ENO

Carefully Look Reverences Vinyl
Ambient music is intended to induce calm and a space to think.
BRIAN ENO

Calm Space Thinking
It’s amazing how quickly people get used to bad quality.
BRIAN ENO

Bad People Qualities Quality
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
I’m fascinated by musicians who don’t completely understand their territory; that’s when you do your best work.
BRIAN ENO

Best Musician Territory Work
When I work there are two distinct phases: the phase of pushing the work along, getting something to happen, where all the input comes from me, and phase two, where things start to combine in a way that wasn’t expected or predicted by what I supplied.
BRIAN ENO

Come Happen Identity Moving Something Term
When I went back to England after a year away, the country seemed stuck, dozing in a fairy tale, stifled by the weight of tradition.
BRIAN ENO

Country Weight Years
Most game music is based on loops effectively.
BRIAN ENO

Games Loops Music
I’m not interested in possible complexities. I regard song structure as a graph paper.
BRIAN ENO

Paper Song Structure
My guitar only has five strings ’cause the top one broke and I decided not to put it back on: when I play chords I only play bar chords, and the top one always used to cut me there.
BRIAN ENO

Chord Cutting Guitar Play
I occasionally meet people and they say, ‘Oh, I was born to Discreet Music’… They always have very weird eyes, those people.
BRIAN ENO

Born Eye Occasionally People
I had a lot of trouble with engineers, because their whole background is learning from a functional point of view, and then learning how to perform that function.
BRIAN ENO

Function Trouble Views
I want to rethink surrender as an active verb.
BRIAN ENO

Surrender Verbs Want
I suppose I am reluctant about being any sort of ‘star’ and I didn’t particularly want to be portrayed as one.
BRIAN ENO

Stars Want
Admirers can be a tremendous force for conservatism.
BRIAN ENO

Admirer Conservatism Force
I belong to a gospel choir. They know I am an atheist but they are very tolerant.
BRIAN ENO

Atheist Choir Knows
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’m fascinated by musicians who don’t completely understand their territory; that’s when you do your best work.

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I’m fascinated by musicians who don’t completely understand their territory; that’s when you do your best work.

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Popular Authors

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