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I love the sort of ambivalence of this, the ambiguity of something – being, for instance, in a quite busy Mexican restaurant with one of these very gentle tracks playing I remember as being particularly nice.

Brian Eno

Something I’ve realized lately, to my shock, is that I am an optimist, in that I think humans are almost infinitely capable of self-change and self-modification, and that we really can build the future that we want if we’re smart about it.
BRIAN ENO

Human Self Smart 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 my normal life I’m a very unadventurous person.
BRIAN ENO

Life Normal Persons
I’ve noticed a terrible thing, which is I will agree to anything if it’s far enough in the future.
BRIAN ENO

Agree Enough Terrible
The thing that obsesses me more than anything is waste – the waste of human intelligence and creativity.
BRIAN ENO

Creativity Humans Waste
Ambient music is intended to induce calm and a space to think.
BRIAN ENO

Calm Space Thinking
The most important thing is the thing most easily forgotten.
BRIAN ENO

Easily Forgotten Important
Set up a situation that presents you with something slightly beyond your reach.
BRIAN ENO

Beyond Reach Situation
I thought it was magic to be able to catch something identically on tape and then be able to play around with it, run it backwards; I thought that was great for years.
BRIAN ENO

Play Running Years
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
I wanted to get rid of the element that had been considered essential in pop music: the voice.
BRIAN ENO

Aquariums Essentials Voice
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 had an interesting day. I was in the studio with a group of musicians, who shall remain nameless, and I said to them “Our exercise today is not to use ‘undo’ at all. So, there’s no second takes. Or, if you do a second take, you have to do the whole take.
BRIAN ENO

Exercise Interesting People
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
There are certain sounds that I’ve found work well in nearly any context. Their function is not so much musical as spatial: they define the edges of the territory of the music.
BRIAN ENO

Musical Sound Territory
I see TV as a picture medium rather than a narrative medium.
BRIAN ENO

Mediums Narrative Television

I love the sort of ambivalence of this, the ambiguity of something – being, for instance, in a quite busy Mexican restaurant with one of these very gentle tracks playing I remember as being particularly nice.

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I love the sort of ambivalence of this, the ambiguity of something – being, for instance, in a quite busy Mexican restaurant with one of these very gentle tracks playing I remember as being particularly nice.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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