Thought For The Day: Brian Eno

'Most people I know felt that 2016 was the beginning of a long decline with Brexit, then Trump and all these nationalist movements in Europe. It looked like things were going to get worse and worse. I said: ‘Well, what about thinking about it in a different way?’ Actually, it’s the end of a long decline. We’ve been in decline for about 40 years since Thatcher and Reagan and the Ayn Rand infection spread through the political class, and perhaps we’ve bottomed out. My feeling about Brexit was not anger at anybody else, it was anger at myself for not realising what was going on. I thought that all those Ukip people and those National Fronty people were in a little bubble. Then I thought: ‘Fuck, it was us, we were in the bubble, we didn’t notice it.’ There was a revolution brewing and we didn’t spot it because we didn’t make it. We expected we were going to be the revolution...

'Actually, in retrospect, I’ve started to think I’m pleased about Trump and I’m pleased about Brexit because it gives us a kick up the arse and we needed it because we weren’t going to change anything. Just imagine if Hillary Clinton had won and we’d been business as usual, the whole structure she’d inherited, the whole Clinton family myth. I don’t know that’s a future I would particularly want. It just seems that was grinding slowly to a halt, whereas now, with Trump, there’s a chance of a proper crash, and a chance to really rethink.'

From a rather tetchy interview in The Guardian.

PS See Brian's clarification on his Facebook page.

Fagburn: Apropos Of Nothing

Eh?

I've seen more baffling Brian Eno titles.

Via  @Mr_Pastry

The Sun: Randy Gay Men Looking For Rumpy Pumpy Sex Boffins Claim

OGLING hardcore filth has more ups than downs, sex boffins claim.

They reckon watching porn improves attitudes towards rumpy pumpy and gives perverts an outlet for their deviant desires.

The erection eggheads also claim that viewing smut does NOT make you a porn addict — with many believing that the condition does not even exist.

Researchers warned that the industry that has grown around treating people with “porn addiction” is cynical and incredibly lucrative. People reporting addiction are likely to be randy gay men who enjoy thrill-seeking, they claim.

The Sun. 

One of Fagburn's favourite books from last year was Romps, Tots And Boffins... The Strange Language Of News by Robert Hutton.

As you can see above, "journalese" is incapable of writing a sentence - or even using two words (Erection eggheads?!!) - that anyone would actually say in real life.

As Brian Eno might say, with this in your mind I'd like you to read that again. *

Textbook stuff. 

• Shame-ridden pixelated photo, The Sun's own. 

* Brian never actually said this. But I did, just then. #journalism

Thought For The Day: Brian Eno

Perhaps surprisingly, he does not tweet (“I really cannot imagine what I would want to say or hear on Twitter”). How does he feel about social media as a political tool, people having their two-penn’orth over Thatcher’s funeral on Facebook, then moving on when they’ve let off steam?
“In one sense I think that humans are evolving very quickly to be amazingly good at multitasking,” he says. “The downside is that people think that merely being involved in a conversation is the same as doing something about it. That is an illusion and it’s an illusion that governments are very happy to foster. They’re rubbing their hands – everyone thinks they’re ‘engaged’ and it doesn’t make any bloody difference. You have been seen to be commenting but you have not done anything. In a way it is better to let the steam build up.”

The ever fascinating Brian Eno interviewed by the New Statesman. 

The best/worst LGBT example of what Eno's talking about is probably allout.org - an endless series of online petitions, which calls itself "a movement".
A movement of the index finger?

Brighton Festival: Vanessa!

Vanessa Redgrave is guest director of this year's Brighton Festival, which starts tomorrow.
I love Vanessa, me.
It's largely a ceremonial role, with the "director" as a figurehead - a bit like the Mayor of London - and it's hard to see what imprint the mighty Vanessa has had on this year's programme.
Though she has championed the festival as a political project in itself; “Of course, we’re not under bombing and shelling here in Brighton. But things are very hard in the UK. People can’t even turn their gas fires on because of the price. But if you can listen to the radio and hear a beautiful piece of music, or if you can come to some of the many free events at the Festival, then it helps us all, not only to feel together – because we do these things communally – but also to feel better.”
There's a selection of her fillums being shown at the Duke of York's, though sadly no showing for the one I really want to see, the TV remake of Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? she made with sister Lynn.
Vanessa is in conversation at the Dome tomorrow evening (tickets still available at the time of typing!) which is rather tempting.
Being boring the only things I usually end up seeing at the Brighton Festival tend to be these "Interesting People Talking" events; Edward W Said, Mark E Smith, Neil Tennant, Brian Eno.
Actually I was standing outside the MES one, it's a long story.
The best bit of your actual art is Neil Bartlett's What Can You Do?: A Queer Retrospective at the Theatre Royal.
I love Nelly Bartlett, me.
But I see Vanessa is leading the Childrens' Parade tomorrow morning - the traditional start of the festival - so I'll probably go along and watch her doing some waving.

Brian Eno: On Whale Blubber

"I think records were just a little bubble through time and those who made a living from them for a while were lucky. There is no reason why anyone should have made so much money from selling records except that everything was right for this period of time.
"I always knew it would run out sooner or later. It couldn't last, and now it's running out. I don't particularly care that it is and like the way things are going. The record age was just a blip.
"It was a bit like if you had a source of whale blubber in the 1840s and it could be used as fuel. Before gas came along, if you traded in whale blubber, you were the richest man on Earth. Then gas came along and you'd be stuck with your whale blubber. Sorry mate – history's moving along.
"Recorded music equals whale blubber. Eventually, something else will replace it."

Brian Eno talking to Paul Morley in The Observer in 2010.

I can't really post anything right now - takes days to do it - but I thought I'd post this.
One of the most profound statements I've read in recent years.
It makes my brain reel.
To extrapolate; the world changes, we may lose some things we liked or loved, but we move on.
That is all.

Portsmouth Symphonia: Classical Mudley

I blame Brian Eno.

Another Day on Earth

Yesterday I went to see 77 Million Paintings, an art installation by Brian Eno; "a constantly evolving sound and imagescape which continues his exploration into light as an artist's medium and the aesthetic possibilities of 'generative software'."
The audience sat there in silence, awestruck or dumbstruck - and watched it constantly evolving.
I got bored after a minute or three.
I couldn't see it moving and thought it might be broken.
I thought other people might have been thinking the exact same thing, but nobody dared say anything.
Like Tony Hancock's The Rebel.
Isn't it funny the effect that art can have on people?

Why I [heart] Brian Eno

Now I don't care about you, but I love Brian Eno, and am pretty fucking excited that he's organising next month's Brighton Festival.
They've given Brian some slightly wanky title; so he's not the artistic director, he's the curator.
Actually, it could be a self-description he once said in an interview that he thought the role of the artist was like that of a museum curator, bringing things up from the metaphorical cultural basement that he thinks are interesting and wants to share with people.
A bit like Cornelius in Planet of the Apes, though Brian didn't mention him.
There was an odd interview with Brian in the paper yesterday. It included a great piece of Eno ire at being asked in an interview about the Brighton Festival about being in Roxy Music; '"Jesus Christ," snaps Eno. "The second question is about Roxy Music. I knew it. Where's that knife? I'm sick of journalists asking me if I'm going to reform Roxy Music. Didn't I warn you I'd shoot you if you asked about Roxy Music."'
And comes up with a predictably perspicacious cultural dichotomy of control versus surrender. Eno thinks we need to start celebrating surrender; '"Control and surrender have to be kept in balance. That's what surfers do – take control of the situation, then be carried, then take control. In the last few thousand years, we've become incredibly adept technically. We've treasured the controlling part of ourselves and neglected the surrendering part." Eno considers all his recent art to be a rebuttal to this attitude. "I want to rethink surrender as an active verb," he says. "It's not just you being escapist; it's an active choice."'
I think that's brilliant. It's celebrating the passive role over the active - whereas the norm, in sex and in life, is for the latter to be lauded. It's wanting art that's democratic, participatory, anarchistic...
I'm looking foward to going to see Brian's 'This is an illustrated talk!' at Brighton Dome on My 22nd. Brian Eno is one of my few heroes, and one of the even fewer of my heroes that I haven't been in the same room as yet. I love his music, but it seems more appropriate and more thrilling to go and hear Brian thinking aloud.
He's a pretty handsome fellow for a 61 year-old too.
If we get to ask Brian Eno questions I'd like to ask him if the fact that his father was a postman made him interested in human communication, why this technophile doesn't have a website, and why his exhibition 77 Million Paintings is never open when I visit.