Go to extremes and retreat to a useful position

Brian Eno

So, i'm sitting on my friends couch this morning trawling through all the crap on face book and i came to a post from one of my favourite Dj's King Unique

Amongst all the stuff posted on face book, there's always going to be something enlightening, so i clicked on the following video and watched it on the iPad while washing the dishes from last night (god bless you Mr iPad, you are a god, but not my god...thank god! )

Introducing Brian Eno


Now, i'm not a fan of Brian Eno, i don't know much about the guy or his music, but it was interesting to listen to the guy talk, you can always learn something from everybody and everybody is your superior in some way, here's what i learnt, iPad in hand.

Some of the interesting things he said were:

'You go to extremes and retreat to a useful position'

His example was:

'It's nice knowing that you can go to the Antarctic, but i'd rather be here in my studio, but i could go there too'

 I don't think i want to go there?

 It reminded me of ´Dialectic´ method for reasoning

Thesis + Antithesis = Synthesis (A+B=C)
Capitalist + Communist = Socialist

Maybe it's like for good to exist, bad must also exist? Love and Hate, you need to see bad movies to know what a good movie is, you need to have had a crap relationship to know when you are in a great relationship, bad house mate... do i need to continue?

I am reminded of the Liverpool Buddhist monk i met in India (that talked like Ringo Starr) i remember thinking, there is hope for me yet, maybe one day i will be a monk? He used to tell stories of how he used to trip on LSD in his commission flat in Liverpool and look at a picture tripping for hours, he couldn't open his door at night, it was way too dangerous to do that. The jury is still out on me being a monk, but i will continue with Brian Eno...

Trippy

So when Brian Eno is composing, he hears birds outside his window and also includes them, how interesting?

Introducing William

I remember reading about William S Burroughs, when he was teaching he told his students when they write they should also include the person walking past their window in their stories, of course Mr Burroughs's students thought they were going crazy when they tried this?

 As Seal would say...

 'But we're never going to survive unless we go a little bit crazy'

Maybe you need of include a little bit of crazy in your life to be sane? After all, crazy is a social term, not a medical term.

Social science is not an actual science, mental disorders are pretty much invented anyways, they medically cannot be proven.

Just ask Richard P. Feynman!

Someone was telling me a few weeks ago about how you can use your capacity for being crazy as a sort of defencive mechanism, to keep you sane and maybe safe? Basically if people think you could open a whole can of whoop ass on them, they will leave you alone and not fu*k with you.

It's not the size of the dog, it's the fight that's in the dog.

Maybe it comes down to the laws of the jungle where animals wont risk fighting with another animal where they think they will get injured? If they get injured in a conflict they wont be able to be predators and they will starve?

The point is you have to be willing to go there to be safe and if you've been there, you can more than likely go back there and come back to your useful position?

Humans obviously aren't animals, we are talking animals and some with iPads, with nothing better to do, than think about this stuff on a couch at 7am

Monkey see, monkey do. Me at 7am

Brian was talking about instruments for recording, he said instead of having a keyboard with 100's of effects which do so many things, some effects and sounds are not much different form each other it's much better to have 7 really good distinct different sounds, like an electric guitar, interesting point!

What he is referring to here is 'Thin slicing', which is basically editing information for a prospective.

The idea is you don't need to know everything to make a decision, to make certain decisions, you take all the data and edit it.

This editing is called 'Thin Slicing', edit the data to get the Information, which is the input to form a perspective.

It's the difference between knowing the important and un-important, data and information to determine the correct information to make a decision, from a list of possible options.

Another book i was reading called the Mathematics of life talked about John Gottman, a mathematician, he's able to thin slice 4 key criteria to determine the probability of how long a relationship will last, or not.

The 4 criteria (the 4 horsemen) he determined for relationships were Defensiveness, stonewalling, criticism and (the most important) is contempt

Do you like horses, with men on them?

He said when you can measure contempt, you don't need to know anything else, all the other data is pretty much irrelevant and my impression from Brian Eno is doing the same, but in a musical way, maybe he doesn't even realise it.

My pause button , here's the story of the Pause button

And that's what i was thinking, watching this documentary this morning, it's funny, i seem to have spent quite a few years being extreme, now the most useful position is the one i call moderation, or 'Just press pause!' it can be quite a tricky thing to get a hold of, sometimes i have it, but not for long and let it slip again.

I need to remind myself, hence the tattoo.

p.s.
One last thing he said was

Anybody that believes in the after life possibly prone to being mad in this life

Too true Brian!