The Oblique Box by Brian Eno

Te encuentras atorado, en un callejón sin salida creativo, intelectual. Toma una carta, la primera que salga, al azar...lo que te diga lo haces. Punto. Las oraciones que lees son propuestas de Eno para romper los esquemas, para que salgas de aquello que abordas de manera rutinaria, para encontrar ese algo más que muchas veces se pierde en lo obvio.

The deck itself had its origins in the discovery by Brian Eno that both he and his friend Peter Schmidt (a British painter whose works grace the cover of "Evening Star" and whose watercolours decorated the back LP cover of Eno's "Before and After Science" and also appeared as full-size prints in a small number of the original releases) tended to keep a set of basic working principles which guided them through the kinds of moments of pressure - either working through a heavy painting session or watching the clock tick while you're running up a big buck studio bill. Both Schmidt and Eno realized that the pressures of time tended to steer them away from the ways of thinking they found most productive when the pressure was off. The Strategies were, then, a way to remind themselves of those habits of thinking - to jog the mind.

It is not clear from any sources I've run across whether the cards were explicitly intended to be oracular at the outset - that is, whether or not Peter Schmidt and Eno necessarily saw them exclusively as a "single instruction/single response" kind of "game". The introductory cards included in all three versions of the first versions of the Oblique Strategies suggest otherwise. It seems clear, also, that the deck was not conceived of as a set of "fixed" instructions, but rather a group of ideas to be added to or modified over time; each of the three decks included 4 or 5 blank cards, intended to be filled and used as needed.

Eno discusses the Oblique Strategies at greatest length in an interview with Charles Amirkhanian, conducted at KPFA in Berkeley in early 1980:

"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."

The first Oblique Strategy said "Honour thy error as a hidden intention." And, in fact, Peter's first Oblique Strategy - done quite independently and before either of us had become conscious that the other was doing that - was ...I think it was "Was it really a mistake?" which was, of course, much the same kind of message. Well, I collected about fifteen or twenty of these and then I put them onto cards. At the same time, Peter had been keeping a little book of messages to himself as regards painting, and he'd kept those in a notebook. We were both very surprised to find the other not only using a similar system but also many of the messages being absolutely overlapping, you know...there was a complete correspondence between the messages. So subsequently we decided to try to work out a way of making that available to other people, which we did; we published them as a pack of cards, and they're now used by quite a lot of different people, I think.

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

Nuestra casa somos nosotos mismos

nuestra casa es todo lo que hacemos con ella
nuestra casa es todo lo que hacemos fuera de ella

en la calle, en la oficina, se ve muy claro cómo es nuestra casa

cómo hablas y te comportas, emite señales tu casa y de ti

tú eres tu casa
todo lo que ocurre en el mundo emana de allí

todo lo que no nos gusta seguramente también habita en nuestra casa
En nuestra casa hay divanes, cuartos de triques, la tele: en nuestra casa interior

las cosas que no nos gustan del exterior, las cosas que criticamos, las cosas que negamos, también yacen en algún lugar de nuestra casa.

todo lo que sucede afuera salió de casa

Si hablas con mil groserías por segundo, o no, si vociferas, si gritas con el claxon, si piensas que los demás están mal pero tú no. Seguro esos sentimientos habitan en algún rincón de tu casa. Allí donde el polvo se acumula. Pero ahí están.

si crees en dios
o no crees en dios

si hablas de comunicarte con tus hijos y no sabes ni qué color es su favorito
si extorsionas a alguien o lo chantajeas o lo sobornas;
si tratas mal a tus compañeros de trabajo, si tienes mal humor porque algo no te funciona, todo eso vive en tu casa

si tu casa está en paz, y llegas y es tu oasis, y puedes sonreír...todo ello está en ti.

nuestra casa somos nosotros.

como tenemos nuestra casa nos tenemos a nosotros.

nuestra casa somos nosotros.

Radiohead: la piratería no está destruyendo a la industria

Radiohead's Ed O'Brien 'Piracy isn't killing music'

Guitarist speaks out about the current state of the music industry

* January 23, 2010 | 1 Comments
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Radiohead's Ed O'Brien has hit out at claims that piracy is killing the music industry.

Expressing his thoughts on the situation, the guitarist explained that whilst pirates might not purchase music, they are still putting money into the industry.

"I have a problem when people in the industry say 'it's killing the industry, it's the thing that's ripping us apart'," O'Brien said in an interview on Midem. "I don't actually believe it is... [Pirates] might not buy an album, but they're spending their money buying concert tickets, a t-shirt, whatever."

In the interview, O'Brien also added what solutions the industry could be making to remedy the problem.

"It's an analogue business model in a digital era," he explained. "The business model has to change. You've got to license out more music - have more Spotifys, more websites selling more music. You've got to make it slightly cheaper to get music in order to compete with the peer-to-peers."

He added: "I find it staggering that the industry seems to be really dragging its heels on this - this is stuff that you could do in one week. Move quicker!"

Meanwhile, Radiohead have announced that they will play a one-off gig for Oxfam's Haiti earthquake emergency response appeal this weekend (January 24).

Gorillaz Plastic Beach

Lunatics, quedamos que aquí compartiremos nuestros gustos musicales y de todo tipo con ustedes. Pues aquí otra gran noticia, no sólo tendremos el largamente esperado nuevo álbum de peter gabriel, sino que también tendremos uno nuevo de Massive Attack y, en esta entrada les damos info sobre lo nuevo de Gorillaz, la banda más animada del mundo jajajaja. Bueno...en fin...Salu2

Elsewhere in Albarn: He's working on a Royal Opera House-commissioned "proper" opera with Alan Moore (Watchmen); there's a trio project with Flea and Tony Allen (last seen with Damon on The Good, The Band & The Queen); Blur recently unveiled the documentary of their short-lived reunion, No Distance Left To Run; and Damon has a killer contribution to "Saturday Come Slow," a track from Massive Attack's forthcoming LP Heligoland. Whew-hoo.

Check out the roll call on this tracklist:

01 "Orchestral Intro" (featuring Sinfonia ViVA)
02 "Welcome To The World Of The Plastic Beach" (feat. Snoop Dogg & Hypnotic Brass Ensemble)
03 "White Flag" (feat. Kano, Bashy & The National Orchestra For Arabic Music)
04 "Rhinestone Eyes"
05 "Stylo" (feat. Bobby Womack & Mos Def)
06 "Superfast Jellyfish" (feat. Gruff Rhys & De La Soul)
07 "Empire Ants" (feat. Little Dragon)
08 "Glitter Freeze" (feat. Mark E Smith)
09 "Some Kind Of Nature" (feat. Lou Reed)
10 "On Melancholy Hill"
11 "Broken"
12 "Sweepstakes" (feat. Mos Def & Hypnotic Brass Ensemble)
13 "Plastic Beach" (feat. Mick Jones & Paul Simonon)
14 "To Binge" (feat. Little Dragon)
15 "Cloud Of Unknowing" (feat. Bobby Womack and Sinfonia ViVA)
16 "Pirate Jet"

REM Movimiento rápido de los ojos y del oído

amigos lunatics hay veces que las palabras sobran que no nos llevan a ningún lado Ese es el caso de REM ...y en vivo luchas entre seguir gritando o quedarte mudo qué haríamos sin música ...por eso decimos...nada qué decir...escucha a REM, trans por ta te

IL Mondo Della Luna: Una Opera

Neal Goren, the founding artistic director of the enterprising Gotham Chamber Opera, after taking his nephew to the Hayden Planetarium in the American Museum of Natural History one day, thought it would be the perfect place to present a production of Haydn’s fanciful opera “Il Mondo Della Luna.”

Mr. Goren’s brilliantly eccentric idea came to fruition on Tuesday night when the Gotham Chamber Opera, in association with the museum, presented the first of six performances of this seldom-heard work at the planetarium before a packed house. Still, for all the clever theatrical trappings, bizarre sci-fi costumes and special effects, which included, naturally, wondrous video images of the starry cosmos projected on the domed ceiling, the production indulged in stock comic bits and lame overacting. The singers often sounded tired, which was understandable, since this frenetic, eager-to-please production demanded such nonstop physical exertion.

The director Diane Paulus and the video and production designer Philip Bussmann had to figure out how to present a chamber opera in the planetarium, which has no stage and no pit. A makeshift platform just large enough to accommodate the 25-piece orchestra was constructed over some of the seats that encircle the space.

The harder challenge was coming up with a stage area in the center of the circular floor so that the singers could be seen from the back rows. That was accomplished with a long wooden table and several metal staircases that were wheeled out by a stage crew wearing white lab coats. That meant, however, that the singers continually had to climb up and down steps and leap onto and off the table. I hesitate to assess the quality of their voices, since performing in this production must have been like a workout on a Stairmaster.

Still, give the company credit for taking opera to an unconventional setting and for championing this overlooked 1777 work. With a libretto by Carlo Goldoni, “Il Mondo Della Luna” tells of Buonafede, the wealthy and protective father of two marriageable daughters, who disapproves of the men they love. Ecclitico, a wily astrologer who knows that his profession is a sham, is determined to marry Buonafede’s daughter Clarice. He convinces the gullible father that they can all travel to the moon, a magical world where the mores of male-female relations favor males.

Once there the daughters, along with their maid, Lisetta, are ordered into matches with moon men (actually their lovers) by the emperor. The stupefied Buonafede cannot object, and when the scam is revealed, he relents and blesses the unions.

It would have been interesting for a production to tap into the spiritual resonances of this opera. Haydn’s music is not just witty but also elaborate, rich and tender, qualities Mr. Goren captured in his conducting. Buonafede is the victim of a joke. Yet something about the fantasy of life in another realm transforms him. How touching it might have been to see the elderly man actually awestruck by his phony lunar exploit.

Instead Ms. Paulus relies on comic shtick. As the cavalier Ernesto grooms himself to court Buonafede’s other daughter, Flaminia, Ernesto’s ragtag servant, Cecco, recoils at his master’s bad underarm odor. Later, during one ensemble, Ernesto hops atop the sprawled Flaminia and leeringly pokes his head under her skirts, a crude bit out of keeping with the sweet tone of Haydn’s score (sensibly trimmed here to 100 minutes without intermission). Several times the sisters and their maid break into disco dancing routines. At moments like these you sense the director straining for laughs.

Using bright stage lights would have made it impossible to project images onto the ceiling during the scenes on the moon. Anka Lupes, the costume designer, came up with the ingenious idea of lighting the actual costumes the characters wear during the lunar excursion, which included three dancers in white tights twirling illuminated hoops. The costumes were wildly inventive if a bit tacky. Cecco, portraying the emperor of the moon in a spiked crown and luminous cape, looked like the star of a sci-fi version of “La Cage aux Folles.”

The baritone Marco Nisticò was a robust-voiced Buonafede. The tenor Nicholas Coppolo was a dashing Ecclitico, although his singing was sometimes tight. The soprano parts of the daughters are replete with coloratura roulades and passagework, ably handled by Albina Shagimuratova (Flaminia) and Hanan Alattar (Clarice). The mezzo-soprano Rachel Calloway as Lisetta did the sexpot maid thing asked of her, but managed to sing well. The tenor Matthew Tuell brought his appealing voice to Cecco.

The officials of the museum deserve many thanks for making the planetarium suitable for opera.

“Il Mondo Della Luna” will be repeated on Monday through Thursday evenings in the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History, Central Park West at 81st Street; (212) 279-4200, ticketcentral.com.