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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

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
If you think of the way a composer or say a pop arranger works – he has an idea and he writes it down, so there’s one transmission loss. Then he gives the score to a group of musicians who interpret that, so there’s another transmission loss.
BRIAN ENO

Down Loss Thinking Transmission Writing
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

Mexican Nice Track
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
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
American television really is pathetic.
BRIAN ENO

Country Pathetic People Television
I belong to a gospel choir. They know I am an atheist but they are very tolerant.
BRIAN ENO

Atheist Choir Knows
Law is always better than war.
BRIAN ENO

Always Better Law War
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
Think inside the work – outside the work
BRIAN ENO

Inside Thinking Work
Set up a situation that presents you with something slightly beyond your reach.
BRIAN ENO

Beyond Reach Situation
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
When I work there are two distinct phases: the phase of pushing the work along, getting something to happen, where all the input comes from me, and phase two, where things start to combine in a way that wasn’t expected or predicted by what I supplied.
BRIAN ENO

Come Happen Identity Moving Something Term
Sometimes you recognize that there is a category of human experience that has not been identified but everyone knows about it. That is when I find a term to describe it.
BRIAN ENO

Categories Sometimes Term
The tools are evolving, and people’s interests are evolving as well. So, suddenly people like to hear bands, people like Devendra Banhart or the xx, bands that make a kind of virtue of sloppiness.
BRIAN ENO

Hands People Sloppiness
I hate the way CDs just drone on for bloody hours and you stop caring.
BRIAN ENO

Bloddy Caring Hate

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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