When you build a building, you finish a building. You don't finish a garden; you start it, and then it carries on with its life. So my analogy was really to say that we composers or some of us should think of ourselves as people who start processes rather than finish them. And there might be surprises.

Brian Eno

Categorized in : Thinking People Garden

Stop thinking about art works as objects, and start thinking abou... by Brian Eno

Stop thinking about art works as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences.

philosophical photography art

The trouble with New Age music is that there's no evil in it. by Brian Eno

The trouble with New Age music is that there's no evil in it.

trouble age evil

Everything is an experiment until it has a deadline. That gives it a destination, context, and a reason.

destination reason giving

If something is good, you must torture it mercilessly until it is... by Brian Eno

If something is good, you must torture it mercilessly until it is either dead or great.

torture ifs

Lyrics are always misleading because they make people think that... by Brian Eno

Lyrics are always misleading because they make people think that that's what the music is about.

music-is people thinking

The first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies, but e... by Brian Eno

The first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band

velvet albums band

The dominant theory coming out of Hollywood is that peoples' attention spans are getting shorter and shorter and they need more stimulation.

hollywood attention needs

When I was working with Talking Heads what would happen typically is that they would go out and start playing a track, and I would always run the tape. I always record everything, even a run through where you're trying to get in tune. That's a principle because sometimes when the situation isn't clear interesting things happen, and they are worth listening to again.

track running interesting

The point about working is not to produce great stuff all the time, but to remain ready for when you can.

produce ready stuff

Set up a situation that presents you with something slightly beyo... by Brian Eno

Set up a situation that presents you with something slightly beyond your reach.

situation

If there is a new fascism, it won't come from skinheads and punks; it will come from people who eat granola and think they know how the world should be.

people world thinking

Whenever you listen to a piece of music, what you are actually doing is hearing the latest sentence in a very long story you’ve been listening to - all the pieces of music you’ve ever heard.

stories listening long

Well, I am a dilettante. It's only in England that dilettantism is considered a bad thing. In other countries it's called interdisciplinary research.

england research country

The reason conservatives cohere and radicals fight: everyone agrees about fears, no one about visions.

vision fighting reason

My interest in making music has been to create something that does not exist that I would like to listen to. I wanted to hear music that had not yet happened, by putting together things that suggested a new thing which did not yet exist.

interest together doe

If you grow up in a very strong religion like Catholicism you certainly cultivate in yourself a certain taste for the intensity of ideas.

growing-up strong ideas

The smart thing in the art world is to have one good idea and nev... by Brian Eno

The smart thing in the art world is to have one good idea and never have another.

world ideas art

You can hear the profile of a sound, in retrospect, so much more clearly than you did at the time. And I think one of the things that's going to be nauseatingly characteristic about so much music of now is its glossy production values and its griddedness, the tightness of the way everything is locked together.

sound together thinking

The point about melody and beat and lyric is that they exist to engage you in a very particular way. They want to occupy your attention.

want attention way

Lyrics are the only thing to do with music that haven't been made... by Brian Eno

Lyrics are the only thing to do with music that haven't been made easier technically.

things-to-do easier made