Brian Eno

Here’s an extract from Brian Eno‘s explanation of this random collection of maxims or aphorisms aimed at helping artists approach their work.

 ⇐ «These cards evolved from our separate working procedures. It was one of the many cases during the friendship that he [Peter Schmidt] and I where we arrived at a working position at almost exactly the same time and almost in exactly the same words. There were times when we hadn’t seen each other for a few months at a time sometimes, and upon remeeting or exchanging letters, we would find that we were in the same intellectual position – which was quite different from the one we’d been in prior to that.

The Oblique Strategies evolved from me being in a number of working situations when the panic of the situation – particularly in studios – tended to make me quickly forget that there were others ways of working and that there were tangential ways of attacking problems that were in many senses more interesting than the direct head-on approach. If you’re in a panic, you tend to take the head-on approach because it seems to be the one that’s going to yield the best results Of course, that often isn’t the case – it’s just the most obvious and – apparently – reliable method. The function of the Oblique Strategies was, initially, to serve as a series of prompts which said, «Don’t forget that you could adopt *this* attitude,» or «Don’t forget you could adopt *that* attitude.»

-Brian Eno, interview with Charles Amirkhanian, KPFA-FM Berkeley, 2/1/80

There are lots of versions of this set of cards devised by Brian Eno & Peter Schmidt.  Here’s two more:

•→‘Random Oblique Strategies’⇐  /  • White on black:→‘Oblique_Strategies‘⇐

 

Sometimes you listen to things and you think,   ‘I’ve only really had one idea in my life, and I’ve just been doing it in a hundred different ways ever since.’  That’s a sort of a slightly depressing thought, but then you … you can remind yourself that that was also true of Samuel Beckett, and Miles Davis, and a few other people.

I think one of the things that art offers you is the chance to surrender, the chance to not be in control any longer. Now if you think about it, most … in our culture … most of the encouragement is to take control. What we like doing, and that’s the reason we enjoy sex, drugs, art and religion, what we like doing is surrendering  [. . . ?] always of losing me, the ways of losing yourself. One of the things I want music to do is to offer people the chance to surrender.

Everything good proceeds from enthusiasm, the sense of ‘I really want to know how this turns out’ will drive you on through many many long nights of no results, um, whereas the feeling ‘I think I ought to do this’ dries up very quickly. The big mistake is to wait for inspiration; it won’t … it won’t come looking for you. It’s not so much creating something, I think it’s … it’s noticing when something’s starting to happen and … noticing and then building on it, saying, ‘OK that’s new. That hasn’t happened before. What does it mean? Where can I go with it?’

I … I often think that artists divide into this musical, ‘Oklahoma’, the farmer and the cowboy. So the farmer is the guy who finds a piece of territory, stakes it up and digs it and cultivates, and grows the land. The cowboy is the one who goes out and finds new territories. I’d rather think of myself as the cowboy, really, than the farmer … um … I like the thrill of being somewhere where I know nobody else’s been, even if it’s quite trivial, you know, it’s only art, it’s not very important, but nonetheless I like the feeling of standing looking at something that nobody else has ever seen before.

Obviously there is an inequality of opportunities among people. Some people do have more opportunities than others, but there’s also an inequality of readiness; some people are more ready to make use of the opportunities that come up than others.

Now I … I studied painting and this was in the sixties, at a time when pop music was becoming very very interesting, all this new technology was coming into existence, the recording studio. I was fascinated by it, partly I think because recording was a way of painting with sound. Similarly, new instruments were appearing, the synthesizer, which had no history. There was no ‘correct’ way of playing synthesizers so I got it early, I could play any way I wanted, I didn’t have to go and learn how to play synthesizer, but it was a choice, you know, I could have decided to learn the drums … God knows what would have happened then: another bad drummer in the world…

I remember meeting somebody from a German electronic band who shall remain nameless, and he said, er… ‘I’m after the perfect soundwave,’ and the interesting thing is that the least interesting sound in the universe probably is the perfect soundwave: it’s the sound of nothing happens, it’s the sound of perfection, and it’s boring, as David Byrne said in his song, ‘Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens,’ Distortion is character, basically. In fact, everything we call character is the deviation from perfection, so perfection to me is characterlessness.

by Alfred Dunhill

«Craft is what enables you to be successful when you’re not inspired.» – Brian Eno

Brown Eyes and I were tired  –  We had walked and we had scrambled

Through the moors and through the briars  –  Through the endless blue meanders

In the blue August moon  –  In the cool August moon

 

Over the nights and through the fires  –  We went surging down the wires

Through the towns and on the highways  –  Through the storms in all their thundering

In the blue August moon  –  In the cool August moon

 

Well we rested in a desert – Where the bones were white as teeth, sir  

And we saw St. Elmo’s Fire  splitting ions in the ether

In the blue August moon  – In the cool August moon

◊   I’ll Come Running (To Tie Your Shoes)   ⇓  [«Another Green World»_1975]

I’ll find a place somewhere in the corner  –  I’m gonna waste the rest of my days

Just watching patiently from the window

Just waiting, seasons change, some day, oh oh,

My dreams will pull you through that garden gate

I want to be the wandering sailor – We’re silhouettes by the light of the moon

I sit playing solitaire by the window – Just waiting, seasons change, ah hah, you’ll see

Some day these dreams will pour you through my door

And I’ll come running to tie your shoe  –  I’ll come running to tie your shoe

I’ll come running to tie your shoe  –  I’ll come running to tie your shoe

Oh, oh oh-oh-oho-oho-oho-oho-oho-o-o-o   .   .   .

I’ll come running to tie your shoe   […]

∞  Brian Eno & Phil Manzanera  ⇓ «T N K»  (1976)

Turn off your mind, relax  And float down stream
It is not dying – It is not dying

Lay down all thought – Surrender to the void
It is shining – It is shining

That you may see  the meaning of within
It is being – It is being

That love is all  and love is everyone
It is knowing – It is knowing

That ignorance and hate  may mourn the dead
It is believing – It is believing

But listen to the   color of your dreams
It is not living – It is not living

Or play the game  –  Existence to the end
Of the beginning … Of the beginning … Of the beginning …

*     *     *

♦→   ‘Kurt’s Rejoinder’   ⇓  [«Before & After Science»_1977]

Burger cruising just above the ground, ground, ground
And gunner puts a burnish on his steel
Anna with her feelers moving round, round, round
Is sharpening her needles on the wheel

Burger Bender bargain blender shine, shine, shine
And gunner burn the leader on the fuse
Bundle up the numbers counting 3, 6, 9
Here’s Anna building webs across our shoes

Celebrate the loss of one and all, all, all
And separate the torso from the spine
Burger Bender bouncing like a ball, ball, ball
So Burger Bender bargain blender shine

Do the do-si-do, do the mirror man
Do the Boston Crab, do the allemande . . .

♦  ‘Spider and I’  ↓  [«Before & After Science» – 1977]

Spider and I sit watching the sky on a world without sound
We knit a web to catch one tiny fly for our world without sound
We sleep in the mornings
We dream of a ship that sails away
A thousand miles away…

∞   ‘Spinning Away’   ⇓   [with John Cale]   

Up on a hill, as the day dissolves
With my pencil turning moments into line
High above in the violet sky
A silent silver plane – it draws a golden chain

One by one, all the stars appear
As the great winds of the planet spiral in
Spinning away, like the night sky at Arles
In the million insect storm, the constellations form

On a hill, under a raven sky
I have no idea exactly what I’ve drawn
Some kind of change, some kind of spinning away
With every single line moving further out in time

And now as the pale moon rides
In the stars . . .
Her form in my pale blue lines
In the stars . . .
And there, as the world rolls ‘round
In the stars . . .
I draw, but the lines move ‘round
In the stars . . .
And there, as the great wheels blaze
In the stars . . .
I draw, but my drawing fades
In the stars . . .
And now, as the old sun dies
In the stars . . .
I draw, and the four winds sigh
In the stars, in the stars

∇   ‘Ali Click’  ↓  [Nerve Net – 1992]

Jolly Roger in a pickup – Has a packet on the horses

He’s a docker with a bucket – Just the thicket in a thicket

 

Silly Sally isn’t pally With her crackers in the alley:

She’s a smacker and a whacker  – Wouldn’t dally with a slacker

 

Sally keeping in her locker – Little patches for the docker

Jolly Roger  (Looking pretty,  just the sucker for a shocker)

 

Jolly Roger in a pickup – Has a packet on the horses

He’s a docker with a bucket – Just the thicket in a thicket

∞  w/ David Byrne: → ‘Mea Culpa’  ⇓  [My Life in the Bush of Ghosts_1981]

            •  ‘Tutti Forgetti’ ↓

I forgot everything. Everything. I forgot my weight. I forgot my preferences. I forgot my friends. I forgot my arguments. I forgot everything pertaining to me or my person or any details or extensions thereof or any proposed details or extensions thereof and all damages, scars, debts and probations resultant therefrom.   Too much.

I forgot everything. I forgot everything. I forgot my central heating. I forgot my dog. I forgot my evidence. I forgot all my teeth. I forgot my laughing. I forgot everything. My clothes. My whole wardrobe down to the last shoelace.  I forgot.

I forgot everything. I forgot everything. Everything. Everything. I forgot my every pimple, scar, minor abrasion, burn, raw, blood, steel, hair, teeth, blood, skin, scalp, wheel, colon, socks, turds, kleenex, blood, socks, […?]   Destroyed.

Everything. I forgot everything, oh everything. I forgot everything, oh everything . . .

∇  ‘An Ending Ascent’  ⇓

∞ Brian Eno and the words of Rick Holland  ↓  Drums Between The Bells

As the Sunday Times suggests, «The poems aren’t sung, yet the pieces are undeniably songlike, first because the music refuses to act simply as background, but lurches frequently, sometimes unexpected to the fore, and second because we hear the meaning of the words in the way we normally pick up song lyrics,» while WIRED Magazine calls Eno’s soundscapes, «a tapestry of pillowy synths, minor-key melodies, chiming guitars and skittering drums.»

↑  panic of looking    

night and day
to frost and sun
frost and sun
to smoke and fire
smoke and fire
to single cell

build and paint
to speed and weight
speed and weight
to miniature freight

flow and break
jumps wireless, opaque
                                             and men shake hands
                                          on invisible games.

                                               faster and faster and further away
                                                                      down there, lives and land
                                                               relics of past days
                                                                sit in between shacks
                                                                piped electric and gas
                                                                and the chattering clouds
                                                             speculate charts
                                                                  hopping over aeroplane paths.

                                                              down by a lake 
                                                             the camera shakes
                                                               when he stops for the slow shot
                                                          a panic of looking at the what that we’ve got

¤  . . . In The Future ←

in the future
in that far façade
on that horizon 
beyond the cars
bleating servers
beneath the stars
where city mist has risen. 

to fall in shards
as something else
beyond steel and glass
beyond steel, and glass
when parades give way
beyond stack and grey
to the solace of grass
the solace of grass. 

•→‘Sounds Alien’  ⇐

Sounds are alien and dense
Life will not make sense
Rhythm seams
Will syncopate
The strangest rhythm well
Drums between the bells

∇    ‘Glitch‘  ↓

There is a glitch in the system
Outside the brain flow
Armoured shells melt down
Explode in the main code
Seiged by the blind mass
They won’t stop the chain grow
Numbers grow numbers
Working ants or quantum fires
Will flow on regardless of each abandoned carcass

The only joy there is – is onward search through the darkness
Edict states the lights go out
Learn to fight the nightfall
Work will lead to comfort
Comfort lives a lifetime
But death is not an ending
It’s a place to search the light with

Light in universal terms
Cells out on the great grid
Numbers growing numbers
Working ants, quantum fires
Morph from the energy
Abandoned by each carcass
The greatest joy there is – is onward search through the darkness

∇    ‘Multimedia’  ↓ 

Slap fire paint song
These cave walls dance to the sounds
An aboriginal pound
The earth is dust
Dust – Dust – Dust

Stomped by the soles
Soles shake a pace
A lizard over rocks
Over rocks

Until sound pictures mix
And in synch the sticks click
Picked ochre seams
Through dust and embers
Raise ghostly emblems
In a man’s resemblance
His face paint
Shapes

And the mumbled sing from holes
The groan of pipes through rock
The wind
Hmm hhmm hmmn human rhythm sings
Here click and dust and paint perfume
The air in coloured specks
And rare as hills
Consume the chimes and rhymes now crashing in.

⇒ ‘Celeste’⇐    /  ⇒‘Blonde’⇐   /  ⇒‘Ultramarine’⇐  /  ⇒ ‘Slow Movement: Sand’ ⇐

◊ Footage from Brian Eno’s exhibition of his ↓ 77 Million Paintings

◊  Light and Time: The Visual Art of Brian Eno  ↓

•→  Imaginary Landscapes ← (classic doc on Eno)

♦  Another Green World  ↓  [BBC FOUR – Arena]

♠  ‘One On One ‘  ↓  [doc]

•→ Dunwich Beach, Autumn, 1960  ⇐

‘Fullness Of Wind’ ↑ (Variation on Pachelbel’s ‘Canon In D Major’)-1975

∇  ‘Reflection’  ⇓  (Generative app version)

…running on an Apple TV (4th Generation). App also runs on iPhone & iPad.

«REFLECTION is the most recent of my Ambient experiments and represents the most sophisticated of them so far. My original intention with Ambient music was to make endless music, music that would be there as long as you wanted it to be. I wanted also that this music would unfold differently all the time – ‘like sitting by a river’: it’s always the same river, but it’s always changing. But recordings – whether vinyl, cassette or CD – are limited in length, and replay identically each time you listen to them. So in the past I was limited to making the systems which make the music, but then recording 30 minutes or an hour and releasing that. REFLECTION in its album form – on vinyl or CD – is like this. But the app by which REFLECTION is produced is not restricted: it creates an endless and endlessly changing version of the piece of music.» – Brian Eno (2017)

∇  ‘Everything’s on the Up with the Tories’  ⇓  [2019]

Everything's on the up with the Tories
The gap between the richies and the poories
The porky pies and fabricated stories
Yes, everything's on the up with the Tories

Everything's up the creek with the blue boys
They're selling off the NHS to cowboys
They're cutting back on nurses
(But investing in new hearses)
The nitwits and the we-don't-have-a-clue boys

Everything's on the up with the Tories
With unemployed across all categories
There's Johnson, Gove, Patel
It's a government from hell
And a few more years of Brexit purgatory

Everything's on the up with the righties
Who worship at the feet of Trump almighty
There's people in the street, without a bloody crust to eat
But everything's on the up for the Tories

If you're Eton, Winchester, or Harrow
The road to the future, though narrow
Leads like a well aimed arrow
Right to the bottom of the barrel
(We're scraping the bottom of the barrel)

Everything's on the up with the Tories
They're revved up fighting out for made up stories
They're proudly on the wrong side of history
But everything's on the up
Everything's on the up
Everything's on the up with the Tories