Writing Exercise 1 From Eno's Class

Links: Brian Eno, School of Song

Lecture 1

• Why are all songs about relationships? Very few about science.
• We usually start the day in a very uncreative way. What happens if you start without input? Your habit is to immediately consume things.
• You start to hear things inside yourself, things come up that otherwise wouldn’t.
• If your diet is yourself, you start discovering things. Eventually it will come, things will inspire you.
• “Inspiration comes, but it has to find you working” - Picasso #quote
• Jon Hassell says “What do I really, really like? Not what other people like or want me to like, but what makes me feel alive?” #quote
• How do we innovate?
  • Some people think of something genuinely new, like the bicycle or the television
  • Sometimes you can take something that already exists and make something new out of it
  • Leave something out. Do something that not everyone has done. That is going to be a big focus in the class. Limits are important.
    • “I’ll finish this song in 4 mins”
    • “I’ll work on this song for 1 min per day until the end of the year”
    • “I’ll work on a piece of music that mimmicks bell ringing” - campanology
• Kiss of death is when software pretends to open up possibilities and you can do ANYTHING!! That is instant paralysis according to Eno.
• Haikus are a great structure because they're so demanding and force you to make decisions
• Studs Turkel wrote a lot in the voice of the typical American person, not the personalities that dominate most of the pop culture discussion
• When you take a vocal out of the song, you decenter it. People’s attention often goes to whatever the center of the song is. But taking yourself out of it can be very useful in creating something new.
• An earing can be an entire world, because WE give them meaning.
• What we hear in a song is what is different about the one we are currently listening to
• Songs are not about truth; what we want is to create possible other worlds. It’s always about making fictions.
  • art is about fiction even when it's attempting to tell the truth
• I’m not interested in YOU, I’m interested in the possibilities of what other people could be like
• It doesn’t have to be ME singing, it’s a personality that you devised
  • Songwriting can be an act in character creation rather than truth-telling
• If something catches your attention, listen to whatever that thing is
• Attention is under permanent attack
  • Pay attention to what you're noticing or other people will tell you what to pay attention to
• Getting ready is going to work - do lots of prep, and then make a quick stroke.

Q&A after lecture 1

• How do you balance time between consuming and creating?
  • He reads at night before he goes to sleep. He reads very quickly and no reverance for books, so he’ll dip in and jump through them quite quickly. Related: Abandon media that you aren't actively enjoying
• Question about Gaza and politics
  • You can choose between getting rid of something bad and making something good. You can’t do both at the same time.
  • Friction is extremely important; social media happened because there was no friction. We should change the rules to add more friction so things don’t spiral out of control. Makes me think of AI.

Lecture 3

• Try to polish a turd
• Judgment is fleeting and influenced by many external unrelated factors
• Some songs are not known for a melody or a lyric but a sound

Lecture 4

• luck is about being ready for possibility
• We are contributing to the rise of facism by using social media products