50. Brian Eno, artist

As I cooked dinner this evening (savory greens in phyllo), I listened to the Ezra Klein podcast—something I have not been doing lately because (a) I've been traveling and haven't been listening to any podcasts and, more relevantly, (b) I have been needing a break from political programming, including Ezra, who is sounding more and more conciliatory lately, and that troubles me. Apparently others feel similarly, because he said he's getting "email from a lot of you saying: Can we do a show that’s off the news? Can one show not be on the grim march of events?" (He did not mention the conciliatory gripe.)

And so he offered us a delightful conversation with the "sonic technician," music producer (Talking Heads, Laurie Anderson, U2, David Bowie), and philosopher Brian Eno. Here it is, if you are interested. Me, I'm sure I'll be listening to it again.

I have of course heard of Brian Eno, mainly, I suppose, because of Talking Heads, and as a collaborator with David Byrne on My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (1981). (Here is an interesting story about an unwitting act of appropriation on that album, of a Lebanese artist's music.) More recently, I sometimes use his set of prompt cards, "Oblique Strategies," aka "Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas." (The link here is to an online version, for a taste, but I think the physical cards are more satisfying.)

Their conversation went all sorts of places, but one part I liked—which was sort of about the "collaboration" between maker and consumer of art—concerned the work Eno reckons he's best known for, an album of ambient music called Music for Airports from 1978. Klein zeroes in on the second track, "2/1," asking Eno about music as a "cultivator of different forms of attention." 

As I looked a little more into Eno, I ran across someone saying that when his dog died, he spent some time every day for a year listening to the album Thursday Afternoon, and the comments are all something along the lines of "I've done some of my most productive work on this planet to this" and "On some rainy days I brew myself a cup of cardamom coffee, turn on this video and read a book about Astronomy for a while. Always improves my mood" and "You don’t find this album, it finds you when you need it the most." 

I have just dipped a teaspoon into the sea that is Brian Eno, and I am looking forward to learning (hearing) more. Reading, too: he recently released a new book, What Art Does: An Unfinished Theory. 

Here he is playing the tune "By This River" with his brother Roger at the Acropolis:

I also was taken with the books and records he offered at the end of the interview with Ezra:

Printing and the Mind of Man, a British Museum exhibition catalog from 1963 (this will need to be a concept piece in my mind, but I do love the concept)
A Pattern Language by the architect Christopher Alexander
Naples '44 by Norman Lewis

and for music that has influenced him:

The Rural Blues, a 1960 Folkways release
the Velvet Underground's self-titled third album, with the song "Pale Blue Eyes"
the Consolers, an old-school husband-wife gospel duo (here is their song "Lord Bring Me Down")

I so enjoy intelligent, wide-ranging, eclectic chat about the stuff that makes life interesting and important. This was one of those conversations.