A Quote by Brian Eno

We have two different ways of working. One is completely unstructured where somebody just starts playing and somebody joins in and then the other person joins in, and something starts to happen. That's occasionally what happens. What more often happens is that we settle on some sort of - a few sort of structural ideas, like, "Okay, when I put my finger up, we're all going to move to the extremes of our instruments. So, that means you can only play either very high or very low or both. And we're going to stay there until I take my finger down.
If [Sean] doesn't see me a few days or if I'm really, really busy, and I just sort of get a glimpse of him, or if I'm feeling depressed without him even seeing me, he sort of picks up on it. And he starts getting that way. So I can no longer afford to have artistic depressions. If I start wallowing in a depression, he'll start coming down with stuff, so I'm sort of obligated to keep up. And sometimes I can't, because something will make me depressed and sure as hell he'll get a cold or trap his finger in a door or something, and so now I have sort of more reason to stay healthy or bright.
Something happens, you can't even put your finger on it, and then you don't quite feel the same way anymore. All of a sudden, there's fights or something and you are going "who is this person?" I've seen this happen to other people and it has happened to me.
It happens to us quite often-it feels as though I'm not playing my instrument, something else is playing it and that same thing is playing all three of our instruments. That's what I mean when I say it's frightening sometimes. Maybe we'll all play the same phrase out of nowhere. It happens very often with us.
I write a lot on airplanes actually because it's completely isolating; there's no one to talk to, there's nothing to do. And then I think a lot of it sort of comes out sitting down with the people I'm co-writing with and talking to them about what I'm going through and what I want to say. It just sort of happens; every song came about in a completely different yet organic way.
Everybody is great and the chemistry is different with everyone. That is the joy of acting - you really don't know how it is going to go until you turn up. It's like playing tennis, you can't plan for the match you are going to play until you are actually up against your opponent and what happens, happens. That is the joy of being on set.
With any entertainment business, you sort of have to be OK with just going with it. I've learned very much to just go with the flow and see what happens with my life, and what happens happens.
Cancer doesn't just happen to me; it happens to my best friend; it happens to everyone who means something in my life... The truth is, it does take a village to take care of somebody who's sick, and so we just, at all times, tried to be authentic to the actual experience we had.
Frequently, I go straight into the studio and see what's around. I might hire a couple of instruments that I've never used - maybe a particular type of electronic organ or an echo unit. Then I just dabble with sounds until something starts to happen that suggests a texture. The texture suggests some kind of mood, and the mood suggests some kind of lyric. That's like working in reverse, often quite the other way around, from sound to song. Although often they stop before they get to the song stage.
No man wants to settle down. It happens. Eventually you're going to bump into somebody that makes you go, 'Hmm, I don't mind seeing this person every day.'
You get two weeks after you do a shoe where you can test whether it's good or not - if you're going to like it in 20 years. Then I know that it's going to be my shoe for a long time. That doesn't happen very often, but it happens.
I had a dream that Louis Armstrong was playing the 'Swept Away' melody. I have no idea where it came from. But Louis Armstrong was playing it and singing the song to me. I woke up-it's a borrowed melody no doubt-and wrote it down. If I hear a song and I choose not to put it down, that's me neglecting to accept that song. I think there's a very spiritual and godly-type ting that happens, and it happens to way more people than we know. It's just that very few of us choose to engage it.
Having children, you have so much more structure in your life. The open-endedness of being a single woman is gone, you know? It's sort of like, from 1 P.M. to 3 P.M. the kids are going to take a nap, so now I have time to sit down and write the lyrics, or once they're put to bed, I have a few hours to focus on those things. I need that. It's a very strange process, really - I can never predict what's going to happen. It always feels uncomfortable and awkward.
Whenever you hear somebody else is auditioning for something, you sort of assume they're going to get it. You should try to just ignore it. I don't find it very helpful to know who else is going up for stuff, generally.
If you see me performing, you're going, that guy is simply the most extroverted guy I've ever seen. But if you've seen me very often on a daily basis and all the while growing up, I was very, very introverted. Very introverted. So I have sort of the extremes of both of those characteristics.
I'm not that type of musician where I can sit down at the piano and work out a song; I actually really enjoy that process of sitting with somebody and having nothing and then suddenly something starts appearing. You struggle with it, and then suddenly a song starts to appear. Then, you've got to try and muscle it - there's that word again - into something and you do. You tussle with it and play with it and roll around with it and suddenly, magically, something appears.
Not only are we not using any programmed loops or computers onstage, we're also improvising with our instruments. We're playing our instruments probably more so than most people that I see play their instruments. I think we all sort of strive for that - we all want magical things to happen onstage. We don't say "mistakes" in this band, we call them "highlights."
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