brian-eno.net

Here, I imagine

I am a little further ahead

although it’s actually a lot further ahead

in fact, probably, I will never get there…

It is impossible to create something that contains everything – the process of creation itself is a matter of choosing a small portion of elements, arranging them in some particular manner (representational or abstract, in a normalized or unusual fashion) and, if one finds it appropriate, making them available for other people to consider giving it some amount of their attention. That is to say, any one particular creation primarily omits. It is a (hopefully!) unique realization of a minute portion of everything that is possible at the omission of most everything that is possible.

However.
Some creations very much feel as though they operate only within the limited parameters of the elements which comprise them – and, far from being a negative attribute, this is sometimes just what is needed. Other creations, on the other hand, while they are comprised of similarly limited elements particularly arranged, they are arranged in such a way that one might feel them extending out indefinitely toward everything that is possible. Such creations are unable, of course, to contain or encapsulate or touch upon everything that is possible but they do reach out from the necessarily limited zone of their own dwelling site and offer a pathway from which one may venture out toward everything that is possible and which allows the created work and its dwelling site and the people who decide to spend some time there to keep an open receptivity for all that is possible.