They are not final, as new ideas will present themselves, and others will become self-evident.'ĭon't get Devo started on Oblique Strategies.

In this case the card is trusted even if its appropriateness is quite unclear. They can be used as a pack, or by drawing a single card from the shuffled pack when a dilemma occurs in a working situation. Sometimes they were recognised in retrospect (intellect catching up with intuition), sometimes they were identified as they were happening, sometimes they were formulated. The blurb accompanying the 2001 edition says: 'These cards evolved from separate observations of the principles underlying what we were doing. So let's go for Eno's own St Elmo's Fire. What's the best ever Oblique Strategies song? Well, it's not going to be anything by Coldplay (did Eno invent a deck just for them with instructions like 'Make everything more pretty' or 'Be a bit sad'?). David Byrne thinks that 'Brian's cards are funny and sometimes useful', but the rest of Talking Heads resented Eno's input. U2 didn't use them, but the Edge applied the cards' rationale of 'seeing limitations as some kind of a strength and a governing influence over what you do' to their work with Eno. Why are they classic? Depends who you ask. Despite Schmidt's death in 1980, Eno has continued to revise the Strategies, and the fifth edition of the cards was published this year, along with the inevitable iPhone app. The power of the synchronicity was enough to convince them to make the messages available to other artists. Where do they come from? Eno claims that he and Schmidt devised almost identical Oblique Strategy systems, at the same time and using almost exactly the same words, but completely independently of each other. How do they work? The actual instructions? Try getting your heads around these: 'Discard an axiom' 'Honor thy error as a hidden intention' 'Not building a wall, but making a brick' 'What are the sections sections of?' 'Always first steps' 'Idiot glee', or indeed, 'Short-circuit principle – a man eating peas in the belief that they will improve virility shovels them straight into his lap.'

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