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The handbook always tells you what it does, and you can be quite sure that if it’s a complex device it can do at least fifteen other things that weren’t predicted in the handbook, or that they didn’t consider desirable. It’s normally those other things that interest me.

Brian Eno

Once I started working with generative music in the 1970s, I was flirting with ideas of making a kind of endless music – not like a record that you’d put on, which would play for a while and finish.
BRIAN ENO

Flirting Ideas Play
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
Admirers can be a tremendous force for conservatism.
BRIAN ENO

Admirer Conservatism Force
I’ve always thought that art is a lie, an interesting lie. And I’ll sort of listen to the “lie” and try to imagine the world which makes that lie true…what that world must be like, and what would have to happen for us to get from this world to that one.
BRIAN ENO

Art Imagine Interesting Lying
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
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
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
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
Put out as much as you can. It doesn’t do anything sitting on a shelf.
BRIAN ENO

Much Shelves Sitting
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
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
One of the great breakthroughs of evolution theory is that you start with simple things and they will grow into complexity.
BRIAN ENO

Evolution Simple Theory
Well, there are some things that I just can’t get out of my head, and they start to annoy me after a while.
BRIAN ENO

Bugs Ears People
The idea that something is uncool because it’s old or foreign has left the collective consciousness.
BRIAN ENO

Consciousness Ideas Uncool
The most important thing in a piece of music is to seduce people to the point where they start searching.
BRIAN ENO

Important People Pieces Searching
A big ego isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A big ego means that you have some confidence in your abilities, really, and that you’re prepared to take the risk of trying them out.
BRIAN ENO

Ego Mean Risk

The handbook always tells you what it does, and you can be quite sure that if it’s a complex device it can do at least fifteen other things that weren’t predicted in the handbook, or that they didn’t consider desirable. It’s normally those other things that interest me.

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The handbook always tells you what it does, and you can be quite sure that if it’s a complex device it can do at least fifteen other things that weren’t predicted in the handbook, or that they didn’t consider desirable. It’s normally those other things that interest me.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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