# Oblique Strategies

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.

## When to use

- Stuck mid-project; have material in front of you, lost contact with it
- Recording-studio energy: tactical decisions inside a defined work
- Group impasse: drawing a card breaks the loop without anyone needing to "be right"
- Decision deadline: forces a move

## Don't use when

- Blank page (the cards assume material exists)
- High-stakes structural decisions

## Procedure

1. Pick a card by random index (not by what feels appropriate — that defeats the operation).
2. Apply it literally to the next decision in front of you. **The card is trusted even if its appropriateness is quite unclear** (Eno).
3. Make the move it suggests.
4. Don't over-explain. The card; what it means here; the move. Done.

## The cards (working subset)

### General provocations
- Use an old idea.
- State the problem in words as clearly as possible.
- Only one element of each kind.
- What would your closest friend do?
- What to increase? What to reduce?
- Are there sections? Consider transitions.
- Try faking it.
- Honour thy error as a hidden intention.
- Ask your body.
- Work at a different speed.
- Repetition is a form of change.
- Look closely at the most embarrassing details and amplify.
- Not building a wall; making a brick.
- Be dirty.
- Take a break.
- Just carry on.
- Discard an axiom.
- Towards the insignificant.
- Give way to your worst impulse.
- Once the search is in progress, something will be found.

### On material
- Use unqualified people.
- Tape your mouth.
- Disconnect from desire.
- Distorting time.
- Look at the order in which you do things.
- Reverse.
- Mute and continue.
- Faced with a choice, do both.
- Use fewer notes.
- Make a sudden, destructive, unpredictable action; incorporate.
- The most important thing is the thing most easily forgotten.

### On process
- Don't be afraid of things because they're easy to do.
- Cluster analysis.
- Emphasize differences.
- Emphasize the flaws.
- Emphasize repetitions.
- Listen to the quiet voice.
- Look at a very small object; look at its centre.
- Lowest common denominator.
- Make a blank valuable by putting it in an exquisite frame.
- Question the heroic.
- Remember those quiet evenings.
- Remove specifics and convert to ambiguities.
- The inconsistency principle.
- The tape is now the music.
- Use an unacceptable colour.
- Voice your suspicions.
- Water.
- Where's the edge? Where does the frame start?

## Anti-slop notes

- Don't generate fake "Eno-style" cards. Use the real deck.
- Don't pad. Card → meaning here → move. Three sentences max.
- Don't apologize when the card lands strangely. The strangeness is the operation.

Full deck and history: rtqe.net/ObliqueStrategies (Gregory Alan Taylor's archive).
