Eno 1995

quotes from Brian Eno's diary of 1995

[eno1995]

Talking with Elvis Costello in the steam-room about the difference between scored and played music. When music is generated by a group of people playing, everyone tends to play most of the time. With scoring, you’re likely to use instruments when you need them. No one feels bad about standing round for three-quarters of an hour and then going ‘bong’ on a timp if that’s what the score demands. This is why scored music is more 'colouristic’ and contoured than most pop - whole sections come and go; the dynamic and timbral ranges are very broad.

Brian Eno, 31 December 1995

[eno1995]

When we’re looking through the pictures, Anton [Corbijn] tells me stories about the sessions, about how the pictures happened. He should publish them with the pictures, but he thinks they subtract from the mystery of the pictures, from the viewer’s freedom to project into the scene. But my taste is to make things as clear as possible and then to see if they still work, or to expose the simplicity of the trick so you realize that you (the viewer) make it work.

Brian Eno, 30 December 1995

[eno1995]

All to Woodbridge to see Mum. Went for a walk with Roger and talked about music and recording.

Brian Eno, 29 December 1995

[eno1995]

Sometimes I think that all I want is to rid the world of artists.

Brian Eno, 28 December 1995

[eno1995]

I started thinking about a production surgery: instead of people sending me demo tapes, they’d come to my surgery and we’d talk through their ‘case’. 'I’d like you to try these backing vocals for a couple of weeks, then come back and tell me how you’re getting on.’ Or 'Trouble is, you need a bit more fibre in your diet. I suggest a full month of Captain Beefheart.’

Brian Eno, 27 December 1995

[eno1995]

Over to Kent for lunch and evening games with A.’s family.

Brian Eno, 26 December 1995

[eno1995]

Great morning excitement as the girls open their gifts. A Barbie horse and carriage for Darla that takes me about two hours to put together. I imagine all over the western hemisphere disgruntled unshaven fathers doing the same thing. And then no pissing batteries (but the Indian shop was open).

Brian Eno, 25 December 1995

[eno1995]

Worked in the studio.

Brian Eno, 24 December 1995

[eno1995]

Reading ‘The Transformation of War’.

Brian Eno, 23 December 1995

[eno1995]

The reason for enforcing altruistic styles of social behaviour is to do them for long enough to experience their rewards.

Brian Eno, 22 December 1995

[eno1995]

My new epitaph: ‘Co-wrote a couple of decent songs and went bald shamelessly.’

Brian Eno, 21 December 1995

[eno1995]

This morning I found a place selling empty capsules for making your own tablets.

Brian Eno, 20 December 1995

[eno1995]

Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them.

Brian Eno, 19 December 1995

[eno1995]

No entry.

Brian Eno, 18 December 1995

[eno1995]

The Beatles’ message was ‘Look: we can do anything - and make it work!’ So the work becomes cradled within (and assessed in terms of) a process of creative improvisation in which the whole culture is at that moment engaged. And improvisations are very forgiving - entered into in the spirit of 'What’s to lose?’

Brian Eno, 17 December 1995

[eno1995]

Found two good pieces of broken ladder in the street.

Brian Eno, 16 December 1995

[eno1995]

My friend Peter Schmidt used to talk about ‘not doing the things that nobody had ever thought of not doing’, which is an inverse process - where you leave out an assumption that everybody has always made and see what happens (e.g. music has to be made of intentionally produced sounds was the assumption that Cage left out). In that version of this process, you discover a value in the absence of something - in fact you discover that the absence of something is the revelation of something else (Bunuel, the film-maker, said, 'Every object conceals another’ - a message that I often relay in the studio when overdubbing starts).

Brian Eno, 15 December 1995