88 lines
2.8 KiB
Markdown
88 lines
2.8 KiB
Markdown
# Oblique Strategies
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Brian Eno + Peter Schmidt, 1975. A deck of ~110 gnomic cards for breaking studio deadlocks. Used on Bowie's *Berlin Trilogy*, *Music for Airports*, and dozens of other records.
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## When to use
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- Stuck mid-project; have material in front of you, lost contact with it
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- Recording-studio energy: tactical decisions inside a defined work
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- Group impasse: drawing a card breaks the loop without anyone needing to "be right"
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- Decision deadline: forces a move
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## Don't use when
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- Blank page (the cards assume material exists)
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- High-stakes structural decisions
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## Procedure
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1. Pick a card by random index (not by what feels appropriate — that defeats the operation).
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2. Apply it literally to the next decision in front of you. **The card is trusted even if its appropriateness is quite unclear** (Eno).
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3. Make the move it suggests.
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4. Don't over-explain. The card; what it means here; the move. Done.
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## The cards (working subset)
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### General provocations
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- Use an old idea.
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- State the problem in words as clearly as possible.
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- Only one element of each kind.
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- What would your closest friend do?
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- What to increase? What to reduce?
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- Are there sections? Consider transitions.
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- Try faking it.
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- Honour thy error as a hidden intention.
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- Ask your body.
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- Work at a different speed.
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- Repetition is a form of change.
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- Look closely at the most embarrassing details and amplify.
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- Not building a wall; making a brick.
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- Be dirty.
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- Take a break.
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- Just carry on.
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- Discard an axiom.
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- Towards the insignificant.
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- Give way to your worst impulse.
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- Once the search is in progress, something will be found.
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### On material
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- Use unqualified people.
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- Tape your mouth.
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- Disconnect from desire.
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- Distorting time.
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- Look at the order in which you do things.
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- Reverse.
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- Mute and continue.
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- Faced with a choice, do both.
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- Use fewer notes.
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- Make a sudden, destructive, unpredictable action; incorporate.
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- The most important thing is the thing most easily forgotten.
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### On process
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- Don't be afraid of things because they're easy to do.
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- Cluster analysis.
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- Emphasize differences.
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- Emphasize the flaws.
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- Emphasize repetitions.
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- Listen to the quiet voice.
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- Look at a very small object; look at its centre.
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- Lowest common denominator.
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- Make a blank valuable by putting it in an exquisite frame.
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- Question the heroic.
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- Remember those quiet evenings.
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- Remove specifics and convert to ambiguities.
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- The inconsistency principle.
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- The tape is now the music.
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- Use an unacceptable colour.
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- Voice your suspicions.
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- Water.
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- Where's the edge? Where does the frame start?
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## Anti-slop notes
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- Don't generate fake "Eno-style" cards. Use the real deck.
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- Don't pad. Card → meaning here → move. Three sentences max.
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- Don't apologize when the card lands strangely. The strangeness is the operation.
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Full deck and history: rtqe.net/ObliqueStrategies (Gregory Alan Taylor's archive).
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