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Oblique Strategies
This nOde last updated September 19th, 2004 and is permanently morphing...
(5 Chicchan (Serpent) / 8 Ch'en (Black) - 5/260 - 12.19.11.11.5)

oblique

oblique (o-blêk´, e-blêk´) adjective
Abbr. obl.
1.a. Having a slanting or sloping direction, course, or position; inclined. b. Mathematics. Designating geometric lines or planes that are neither parallel nor perpendicular.
2.Botany. Having sides of unequal length or form: an oblique leaf.
3.Anatomy. Situated in a slanting position; not transverse or longitudinal: oblique muscles or ligaments.
4.a. Indirect or evasive: oblique political maneuvers. b. Devious, misleading, or dishonest: gave oblique answers to the questions.
5.Not direct in descent; collateral.
6.Grammar. Designating any noun case except the nominative or the vocative.

noun
1.An oblique thing, such as a line, direction, or muscle.
2.Nautical. The act of changing course by less than 90°.

adverb (o-blìk´, e-blìk´)
At an angle of 45°.

[Middle English, from Old French, from Latin oblìquus.]
- oblique´ly adverb
- oblique´ness noun

oblique (adjective)

oblique, inclined, bevel
tipsy, tilted, rakish
biased, askew, skewed, slant, aslant, out of true, off the straight
out of kilter, out of the perpendicular, battered, leaning
recumbent, stooping
cattycornered, kittycornered, rhomboidal, angular
wry, awry, agley, crooked, squinting, cock-eyed, knock-kneed, distorted
diagonal, transverse, transversal
athwart, across, crossed
indirect, zigzag, herringbone, bent, curved
stepped, terraced, in echelon
divergent, nonparallel, deviating

Other Forms
unequal: askew, awry, oblique
unequal: listing, leaning, canting, heeling, oblique
low: unerect, not upright, crouched, crouching, stooping, slouching, bending, oblique
crossed: diagonal, transverse, cross-eyed, squinting, oblique
distorted: wry, awry, askew, crazy, crooked, cock-eyed, on one side, oblique
angular: staggered, crooked, zigzag, oblique
curved: flexed, bent, oblique
directed: axial, diagonal, oblique
deviating: indirect, crooked, zigzag, zigzagging, oblique
occult: indirect, crooked, oblique
dishonest: not straight, unstraight, indirect, bent, crooked, devious, oblique, tortuous, winding, labyrinthine

oblique

oblique (o-blêk') adjective
A style of text created by slanting a roman font to simulate italics when a true italic font doesn't exist on the computer or printer.

Cities and City Life

All that a city will ever allow you is an angle on it- an oblique, indirect sample of what it contains, or what passes through it; a point of view.
Peter Conrad (b. 1948), Australian critic, author. Independent on Sunday (London, 11 March 1990), said of New York.

• industrial track _Oblique_ MP3 (160k) by Somatic Responses off of _Teknoir_ compilation CDx2 on Hymen (1999)
• track _Oblique Eccentricity_ MP3 (192k) by Foreign Terrain off of _LP 1_ CD on Soleil Moon (2000)
• post hardcore shoegazer track _Slash/Oblique_ MP3 (vK) by Prolapse off of _The Italian Flag_ on Radar (1998)
• space ambient track _Oblique_ MP3 (vK) by Construction off of _Aurora_ compilation CD on Merck #004 (2000)

A deck of cards first published in 1975. It had its origins in the discovery by Brian Eno that both he and his friend Peter Schmidt (a British painter whose works grace  the cover of _Evening Star_ and whose watercolors decorated the back LP cover of Eno's _Before and After Science_ and also appeared as full-size prints in a small number of the original releases. They could also be acquired through EG records for a brief period of time, as well) tended to keep a set of basic working principles  which guided them through the kinds of moments of pressure - either working through a heavy painting session or watching the clock tick while you're running up a  big buck studio bill. Both Schmidt and Eno realized that the pressures of time tended to steer them away from the ways of thinking they found most productive when the pressure was off. The Strategies were, then, a way to remind themselves of those habits of thinking - to jog the mind.  It seems clear that the deck was not conceived of as a set of "fixed" instructions, but rather a group of ideas to be added to or modified over time; each of the three decks included 4 or 5 blank cards, intended to be filled and used as needed.
 

• 1.Remove specifics and convert to ambiguities
• 2.Don't be frightened of cliches
• 3.What is the reality of the situation?
• 4.Are there sections? Consider transitions
• 5.Turn it upside down
• 6.Think of the radio
• 7.Allow an easement (an easement is the abandonment of a stricture)
• 8.Simple subtraction
• 9.Be dirty
• 10.Go slowly all the way round the outside
• 11.A line has two sides
• 12.Make an exhaustive list of everything you might do & do the last thing on the list
• 13.Into the impossible
• 14.Towards the insignificant
• 15.Ask people to work against their better judgement
• 16.Take away the elements in order of apparent non-importance
• 17.Infinitesimal gradations
• 18.Change instrument roles
• 19.Accretion
• 20.Disconnect from desire
• 21.Emphasize repetitions
• 22.Faced with a choice, do both
• 23.Children   -speaking     -singing
• 24.Lost in useless territory
• 25.A very small object      Its center
• 26.Don't be afraid of things because they're easy to do
• 27.Don't be frightened to display your talents
• 28.Breathe more deeply
• 29.Honor thy error as a hidden intention
• 30.What are the sections sections of? Imagine a caterpillar moving
• 31.Only one element of each kind
• 32.Is there something missing
• 33.Use `unqualified' people
• 34.How would you have done it?
• 35.Emphasize differences
• 36.Do nothing for as long as possible
• 37.Bridges   -build   -burn
• 38.Always give yourself credit for having more than personality
• 39.You don't have to be ashamed of using your own ideas
• 40.Tidy up
• 41.Do the words need changing?
• 42.Ask your body
• 43.Tape your mouth (given by Ritva Saarikko)
• 44.Water
• 45.Simply a matter of work
• 46.Make a sudden, destructive unpredictable action; incorporate
• 47.Consult other sources   -promising   -unpromising
• 48.Use an unacceptable color
• 49.Humanize something free of error
• 50.Use filters
• 51.Fill every beat with something
• 52.Discard an axiom
• 53.Not building a wall but making a brick
• 54.What wouldn't you do?
• 55.Lowest common denominator
• 56.Decorate, decorate
• 57.Balance the consistency principle with the inconsistency principle
• 58.Get your neck massaged
• 59.Listen to the quiet voice
• 60.Do the washing up
• 61.Is it finished?
• 62.Put in earplugs
• 63.Re-evaluation (a warm feeling)
• 64.Give the name away
• 65.Intentions   -nobility of  -humility of   -credibility of
• 66.Abandon normal instruments
• 67.Use fewer notes
• 68.Repetition is a form of change
• 69.Give way to your worst impulse
• 70.Reverse
• 71.Trust in the you of now
• 72.Imagine the piece as a set of disconnected events
• 73.What would your closest friend do?
• 74.Distorting time
• 75.Make a blank valuable by putting it in an exquisite frame
• 76.Feed the recording back out of the medium
• 77.Convert a melodic element into a rhythmic element
• 78.The most important thing is the thing most easily forgotten
• 79.[blank white card]
• 80.Ghost echoes
• 81.You can only make one dot at a time
• 82.Just carry on
• 83.(Organic) machinery
• 84.The inconsistency principle
• 85.Don't break the silence
• 86.Idiot glee
• 87.Discover the recipes you are using and abandon them
• 88.Cascades
• 89.Courage!
• 90.Spectrum analysis
• 91.What mistakes did you make last time?
• 92.Consider different fading systems
• 93.Mute and continue
• 94.Be extravagant
• 95.It is quite possible (after all)
• 96.What are you really thinking about just now?
• 97.Don't stress on thing more than another [sic]
• 98.State the problem in words as clearly as possible
• 99.Assemble some of the elements in a group and treat the group
• 100.You are an engineer
• 101.Remove ambiguities and convert to specifics
• 102.Look at the order in which you do things
• 103.Go outside. Shut the door.
• 104.Disciplined self-indulgence
• 105.Do we need holes?
• 106.Cluster analysis
• 107.Always first steps
• 108.Cut a vital connection
• 109.Do something boring
• 110.Define an area as `safe' and use it as an anchor
• 111.Is the information correct?
• 112.Overtly resist change
• 113.Question the heroic approach
• 114.Accept advice
• 115.Twist the spine
• 116.Work at a different speed
• 117.Look closely at the most embarrassing details & amplify them
• 118.Mechanicalize something idiosyncratic
• 119.Emphasize the flaws
• 120.Remember those quiet evenings
• 121.Take a break
• 122.Short circuit (example; a man eating peas with the idea that they will improve his virility shovels them straight into his lap)
• 123.Left channel, right channel, center channel
• 124.Use an old idea
• 125.Destroy  -nothing   -the most important thing
• 126.Change nothing and continue with immaculate consistency
• 127.The tape is now the music

film _Slacker_ (vhs/ntsc)(1991) directed by Richard Linklater

D. Montgomery .... Having a Breakthrough Day
Mimi Vitetta  .... Teacup Sculpter
Susannah Simone  ....  Working on Same Painting

Having a Breakthrough Day  Hey man you want a card?  They're um... Oblique Strategies... no two cards are alike, you can think about whatever you want, and you take a card...

Cadillac Crook  Sure..

Having a Breakthrough Day  what did you get?

Cadillac Crook  it says uh... "withdrawing in disgust is not the same thing as apathy..."
 

Having a Breakthrough Day  I've had a total recalibration of my mind, you know. I mean, it's like, I've been banging my head against this 19th century type, um, what? Thought mode? Construct? Human construct? Well, the wall doesn't exist. It's not there, you know. I mean, they tell you, look for the light at the end of the tunnel. Well, there is no tunnel. There's just no structure. The underlying order is chaos, man, I mean everything is in one big ball of fluctuating matter.  Constant state of change.  You know?  I mean, across that great quantum divide is this new consciousness and, you know, I don't know what it's gonna be like but I know that we're all part of it.. I mean it's new physics, you can't look at something without changing it... You know, anything... I mean, like that's almost beyond my imagination... It's just like that butterfly flapping its wings in Galvaston, and somewhere down the road apace, it's gonna create a monsoon in China...

• 604 track _The Light At The End...?_ MP3 (192k) by Zen Paradox off of _Eternal Brainwave_ CD on Psy Harmonics

Working on Same Painting  Sorry I'm late.

Having a Breakthrough Day That's all right. Time doesn't exist.

first mention of Oblique Strategies in Usenet:

From: David Elliott (dce@hammer.UUCP)
Subject: Eno - Working Backwards 1983-1973
Newsgroups: net.records
Date: 1983-11-27 12:41:11 PST
 

After going to the record store 4 times, I finally picked up my copy of the new Eno boxed set - "Working Backwards 1983-1973".

For those of you who, like me, don't have copies of all of the Eno solo albums, this is an interesting package. For those of you who have most of the albums, this may hurt.

The retail price of the box is $72.00 (US) and I paid $62.50 for mine.
(This is not a bad price for an import collection of this size.)

The box contains 9 previously released albums :

        Apollo, On Land, Music for Airports, Music for Films,
        Before and After Science, Discreet Music, Another Green World,
        Taking Tiger Mountain, Here Come the Warm Jets

also included are "Music for Films Volume II" and an EP called "Rarities" containing "Two early singles and some unfinished pieces". (That means you pay less than $6 for each record rather than $8-$10 each, and you get records that you can't get otherwise.)

Each record comes with the original cover, except for "Rarities", which comes in a plain white sleeve with a hole so you can read the label.

The box also includes a special prize -- one Oblique Strategies card (each box has a different card).

My box has four records that are not shrink-wrapped. I'm not sure if they all come this way since Tower Records is notorious for opening records and rewrapping them, but there was an outside label that was intact.

If there is enough interest, I'll be glad to review the new records. (Don't worry. I've gotten used to Eno changing every ten minutes, so I doubt I'll be disappointed as I was with the new XTC album.)

                        David

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