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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

What matters in modern music is not the part you can write down, the words and the tune, but the rest – the texture, the atmosphere, the references and associations.
BRIAN ENO

Atmosphere Matters References What Writing
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
The time I like listening to music most on headphones is, I have a game I play with my brother, he’s a musician as well.And he sends me MIDI files of keyboard pieces. So, these are pieces where I just get a MIDI file.
BRIAN ENO

Brother Favorite Game Hobby
Look closely at the most embarrassing details, and amplify them.
BRIAN ENO

Amplify Details Looks
For the world to be interesting, you have to be manipulating it all the time.
BRIAN ENO

Interesting Manipulate World
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
I’m very good with technology, I always have been, and with machines in general. They seem not threatening like other people find them, but a source of fun and amusement.
BRIAN ENO

Fun People Technology
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
People always focus on people like me who use synthesizers, right, which are explicitly electronic and therefore obvious.
BRIAN ENO

Focus People Real
You don’t have to act as if you know what you’re doing
BRIAN ENO

Act Doing Knows
The philosophical idea that there are no more distances, that we are all just one world, that we are all brothers, is such a drag! I like differences.
BRIAN ENO

Brother Distance Philosophical
I prefer to shoot the arrow, then paint the target around it. You make the niches in which you finally reside.
BRIAN ENO

Arrows Niche Target
I’ve got a feeling that music might not be the most interesting place to be in the world of things.
BRIAN ENO

Feelings Interesting World
So, I try to make signs, graphically and visually, to say to people “Okay, this is this department of my work and this is this other department of my work.” And of course I’m very pleased if people like all of them, but I don’t want them to feel deceived at any point.
BRIAN ENO

Departments Graphical People Pleased
There are hundreds of manufacturers always producing dvices that in general do the same things. Since they have slight structural differences if you take one and fool around with it and give it a good kick it will actually do something that it wasn’t designed to do.
BRIAN ENO

Giving Long Mean
A part of me has become immortal, out of my control.
BRIAN ENO

Become Control Immortal Part
In the 1960s, people were trying to get away from the pop song format. Tracks were getting longer, or much, much shorter.
BRIAN ENO

People Song 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
Given the chance, i’ll die like a baby, on some faraway beach, when the season’s over.
BRIAN ENO

Baby Beach Chance
Ambient music is intended to induce calm and a space to think.
BRIAN ENO

Calm Space Thinking
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
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 don’t like celebrity programmes – but I do like programmes about how ideas are formed and evolve.
BRIAN ENO

Evolve Ideas Programme
Let’s do something else.”And you always think “Oh my God I’ve never done anything at all like that before.” But, of course, in retrospect, and to an outsider, they’ll say, “Oh, yeah that’s typical Eno.
BRIAN ENO

Anything End never Outsider Something Think
Editing is now the easiest thing on earth to do, and all the things that evolved out of word processing – ‘Oh, let’s put that sentence there, let’s get rid of this’ – have become commonplace in films and music too.
BRIAN ENO

Earth Editing Film Sentence
Composition is a way of living out your philosophy and calling it art.
BRIAN ENO

Art Calling Philosophy
Every collaboration helps you grow.
BRIAN ENO

Collaboration Grows Helping

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.’

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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.’

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Popular Authors

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