Brian Eno: All that formula and repetition is like a great big vehicle for carrying the moment of difference — the tiny point where something happens that didn’t happen before.
Elizabeth Becker: The unpredictability has never frustrated me.
Eno: I know. I tend to be nervous about everything.
Becker: You put your intention onto the page, just like you put your intention out into the universe, but you cannot control the results.
Eno: Oh, that’s interesting. Things always look much more calculated in retrospect.
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Becker: The top petals are Prussian Blue mixed with Alizarin Crimson and the bottom petals are Prussian Blue mixed with Payne’s Gray.
Eno: Yes. Then I photocopied all the parts I’d marked and collaged them together.
Becker: This process is very meditative.
Eno: I already saw it as art, so I only needed to put a little context around it and it was dynamite.
Becker: As a sensitive person, I tend to pay attention to people’s body language.
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Eno: But it’s interesting that within one head there can be this childlike fascination with doing everything and the adult saying, “Why don’t you ever tidy up in here?”
Becker: There is a watercolour ground that you can paint onto the canvas if you want to make it more absorbent like watercolour paper.
Eno: You can’t break anything in a city.
Becker: We have a heron that flies over our house every evening.
Eno: (Laughs) Suddenly I’m no longer desperate.