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It’s easy to forget that your best work is done when your attention is fully engaged.

Brian Eno

The seven white notes on the piano – each section of the piece (there are 12 sections) is five of those seven white notes.
BRIAN ENO

Piano Simple White
What happens with notation is that it reduces things to a language which isn’t necessarily appropriate to them. In the same way that words do, you get a much cruder version of what was actually intended.
BRIAN ENO

Appropriate Language Notation
But now you see the results of that in people who are completely crippled unless they know that they have the possibility of “cut and paste” and “undo.” And “undo” and “undo” and “undo” and “undo” and “undo” again.
BRIAN ENO

Criped People See Undo Unless
I wanted to get rid of the element that had been considered essential in pop music: the voice.
BRIAN ENO

Aquariums Essentials Voice
I believe that singing is the key to long life, a good figure, a stable temperament, increased intelligence, new friends, super self-confidence , heightened sexual attractiveness, and a better sense of humor.
BRIAN ENO

Believe Confidence Keys Self
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
Think inside the work – outside the work
BRIAN ENO

Inside Thinking Work
I belong to a gospel choir. They know I am an atheist but they are very tolerant.
BRIAN ENO

Atheist Choir Knows
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 think the idea that people walk around to music is very interesting. They are actually creating the soundtrack to their lives as they walk around to it.
BRIAN ENO

Creating Ideas Thinking
Not many people bought Velvet Underground LPs, but those who did, started a band.
BRIAN ENO

People Underground Velvet
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
What I would really like to do, if I could have a sort of kingship for a short time and organize the group of my dreams.
BRIAN ENO

Dream Feelings Together
One often makes music to supplement one’s world.
BRIAN ENO

Creativity Supplement World
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
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
Cultural objects have no notable identity outside of that which we confer upon them. Their value is entirely a product of the interaction that we have with them.
BRIAN ENO

Identity InterAction Notable
A responsible designer might try to overcome this limitation – probably the engineers at Marshall tried, too. But that sound became the sound of, among others, Jimi Hendrix. That sound is called electric guitar.
BRIAN ENO

Celebrity Electric Guitar Music Overcome Responsible
I hate the thought that someone had picked up one of my song records and was really excited about it, and walks [out of] a record shop with On Land and is disappointed because it isn’t what they wanted.
BRIAN ENO

Hate Land Song
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
Perhaps when music has been shouting for so long, a quieter voice seems attractive.
BRIAN ENO

Attractive Long Voice
The biology of purpose keeps my nose above the surface.
BRIAN ENO

Biology Noses Purpose
It’s actually very easy for democracy to disappear.
BRIAN ENO

Democracy Disappear Easy
With all fashion, what we do is play at being somebody else. We play at inhabiting another kind of world.
BRIAN ENO

Fashion Play World
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
Sometimes they’re of my own creation, as well – and they’re just as annoying. It’s not only other people’s ear worms that bug me, it’s my own, as well.
BRIAN ENO

Annoying Creation Sometimes Well
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

It’s easy to forget that your best work is done when your attention is fully engaged.

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It’s easy to forget that your best work is done when your attention is fully engaged.

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Popular Authors

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