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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

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 often makes music to supplement one’s world.
BRIAN ENO

Creativity Supplement World
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
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
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 occasionally meet people and they say, ‘Oh, I was born to Discreet Music’… They always have very weird eyes, those people.
BRIAN ENO

Born Eye Occasionally People
Perhaps when music has been shouting for so long, a quieter voice seems attractive.
BRIAN ENO

Attractive Long Voice
Most of those melodies are me trying to find out what notes fit, and then hitting ones that don’t fit in a very interesting way.
BRIAN ENO

Hitting Interesting Melodious Trying
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
Quite often, and in fact more often, I would say, I’m struggling all the way through to think, “What is it I like about this? What is the personality of this thing I’m hearing that I like so much?”
BRIAN ENO

Dark Personality Struggle Sweet
People who are very confident in themselves aren’t hurt by criticism. They make use of it.
BRIAN ENO

Criticism Hurt People
Because if someone does that, you can find your own position in relation to it: what is it that I don’t agree with? In the studio I want to articulate a position clearly enough so that other people can use it – or chuck it away if they don’t want it.
BRIAN ENO

Enough Position Relation Someone Use
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
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
Being completely free to choose what to do is actually quite difficult
BRIAN ENO

Being Choose Completely Difficult
A part of me has become immortal, out of my control.
BRIAN ENO

Become Control Immortal Part
Robert Fripp and I will be recording another LP very soon. It should be even more monotonous than the first one!
BRIAN ENO

Firsts Monotonous Should
If I had a stock of fabulous sounds I would just always use them. I wouldn’t bother to find new ones.
BRIAN ENO

Fabulous Sound Use
When I was young, an eccentric uncle decided to teach me how to lie. Not, he explained, because he wanted me to lie, but because he thought I should know how it’s done so I would recognise when I was being lied to.
BRIAN ENO

Decide Done Lying Teach Uncles
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’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
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
Law is always better than war.
BRIAN ENO

Always Better Law War
My guitar only has five strings ’cause the top one broke and I decided not to put it back on: when I play chords I only play bar chords, and the top one always used to cut me there.
BRIAN ENO

Chord Cutting Guitar Play
I’m struck by the insidious, computer-driven tendency to take things out of the domain of muscular activity and put them into the domain of mental activity.
BRIAN ENO

Computer Driven Technology
Once you’ve grown to accept something and it becomes part of the system you’ve inherited, you don’t even notice it any longer.
BRIAN ENO

Accepting Inherited Longer

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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