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

Brian Eno

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

Democracy Disappear Easy
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
For the world to be interesting, you have to be manipulating it all the time.
BRIAN ENO

Interesting Manipulate World
The Marshall guitar amplifier doesn’t just get louder when you turn it up. It distorts the sound to produce a whole range of new harmonics, effectively turning a plucked string instrument into a bowed one.
BRIAN ENO

Guitar Overcoming Trying
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
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
I always use the same guitar; I got this guitar years and years ago for nine pounds. It’s still got the same strings on it.
BRIAN ENO

Guitar Pounds Years
I belong to a gospel choir. They know I am an atheist but they are very tolerant.
BRIAN ENO

Atheist Choir Knows
I despise computers in many ways. I think they’re hopelessly underevolved and overrated.
BRIAN ENO

Computer Thinking Way
Being completely free to choose what to do is actually quite difficult
BRIAN ENO

Being Choose Completely Difficult
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
If you grow up in a very strong religion like Catholicism you certainly cultivate in yourself a certain taste for the intensity of ideas.
BRIAN ENO

Grow Up Ideas Strong
It’s amazing how quickly people get used to bad quality.
BRIAN ENO

Bad People Qualities Quality
Composition is a way of living out your philosophy and calling it art.
BRIAN ENO

Art Calling Philosophy
Some people are very good at being ‘stars’ and it suits them. I’m grudging about it and I find it annoying.
BRIAN ENO

People Stars Suits
You either believe that people respond to authority, or that they respond to kindness and inclusion. I’m obviously in the latter camp. I think that people respond better to reward than punishment.
BRIAN ENO

Believe Kindness Thinking
Of course with everybody else aiming there as well that makes it very hard and expensive to hit. I prefer to shoot the arrow, then paint the target around it. You make the niches in which you finally reside.
BRIAN ENO

Everybody Expensive Plant Riches
Culture is everything you don’t have to do.
BRIAN ENO

Culture Everything Happen
I don’t like headphones very much, and I rarely listen to music on headphones.
BRIAN ENO

Headphones Listening To Music
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 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
When I was working with Talking Heads what would happen typically is that they would go out and start playing a track, and I would always run the tape.
BRIAN ENO

Interesting Running Track
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
I think very often producers are really trying to repeat things. When they hear something in the new songs that they recognize as being a bit like something that was a success on a previous record, they’re inclined to encourage that.
BRIAN ENO

Song Thinking Trying
Law is always better than war.
BRIAN ENO

Always Better Law War
The artists of the past who impressed me were the ones who really focused their work.
BRIAN ENO

Artist Impressed Past
All cultures have these feelings about non-functional areas of activity. And the more time people have on their hands, the more they commit it to those areas.
BRIAN ENO

Feelings Hands People

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

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

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