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It's out.
After who knows how many years, the new album of Brian Eno songs is finally out.
And since the gentleman in question is known worldwide and surrounded by an aura of reverent respect from those who place him among the most oblique/influential figures in the musical production of recent decades, reviews have flourished and will continue to flourish everywhere. And, of course, they contain and will contain references, more or less detailed and articulated, to the prolific activity of Our Man, trying to trace trajectories useful for understanding connections and meanings. Well, it's good and right that someone does that.
I've got something else in mind... I bought the album as soon as it came out, let it spin in the office, grumbled a bit, exclaimed: Damn! It's not an album of songs; it's a meta ambient album with some songs! Then I took it home, placing it next to the other creations of good Brian. It will stay there for a while, to get acclimated.
I have almost all of the Master's works, and I consider some of them really essential. I also have a particular and ancient (since the first listen and it has never faded) preference for an album of songs, Another Green World. (He made others, beautiful and interesting, alone or with Cale, but I love that one)
I even met the Master years ago, and I asked him: when will you make another wonderful album of songs? He gave an oblique reply (and what else could he do?). I thought this would be the album of wonderful songs. Maybe if I let it spin a bit more, it will reveal more of itself than it appears now, we'll wait and listen.
Waiting for a real review that explains how it is and how it should be, how valuable it is, whether it is a confirmation of a great talent or the cliché of a somewhat overcooked elderly person, I'd like you to read the words of old Brian, which I found some time ago, translated and published I can't quite remember where. I attach the following passage as a small attempt to chip away at the widely spread image that portrays Our Man as a serious intellectual obviously boring; it is not so at all, and if you listen to his work (the best things) you often understand, sometimes a bit less... I hope you know who Duchamp was, otherwise it would be good to research to understand the meaning...
Duchamp's Fountain
by Brian EnoEfforts to keep art special are becoming increasingly bizarre. This was a theme of a speech I gave at the Museum of Modern Art in New York as a participant in the High Art / Low Art exhibition.
Excerpt from “Brian Eno, A Year with Swollen Appendices”. Faber & Faber(London 1996).
During the day, looking around the exhibition, I noticed that Duchamp's Fountain — a men's urinal that he signed and displayed in 1917 as the first “readymade” — was among the works on display.
I had previously seen the same piece in London and at the São Paulo Biennale. I asked someone how much they thought the insurance premium might amount to for transporting this thing to New York and for the security.
The figure of $30,000 was mentioned. I don't know if this is accurate, but it's certainly believable.
What interested me in knowing was why, given the spirit with which Duchamp claimed to have made the work — in his words, "aesthetic indifference" — it was necessary to transport precisely that urinal and not another around the world. This seemed a complete misunderstanding: Duchamp had explicitly said, "I can call any old urinal — or any other object of that kind — a work of art", yet the curators behaved as if they thought that only this particular urinal was a Work of Art. If it wasn't so, then why not exhibit any urinal — procured at much less cost from the plumber on the corner?
Well, aside from these important considerations, I've always wanted to urinate in that piece of art, to leave my small mark in the history of art. I thought that would be my last chance — every time it had been exhibited it had been much more protected. At MoMA, it was displayed behind glass in a large showcase.
There was, however, a narrow gap between the two front glass panels. It was about 3/16 of an inch wide. I went to the plumber on the corner and got two feet of clear plastic tubing of that thickness, along with zinc wire of similar length.
Back in my hotel room, I inserted the wire into the tube to stiffen it. After that, I urinated in the sink and, using the tube like a pipette, managed to fill it with urine. I then inserted the entire apparatus into my pants leg and returned to the museum, keeping my thumb over the top end to ensure the urine stayed in the tube. In the museum, I positioned myself in front of the display case, intensely focusing on its content. There was a guard standing about 12 feet in front of me. I opened my fly and slid out the tubing, carefully inserting it through the gap in the glass. It was the perfect fit, and it slid in noiselessly until the end was positioned above the famous toilet.
I removed my thumb, and a small but distinct trickle of my urine sprayed into the artwork.
That evening, I used this incident, documented with numerous diagrams showing from all angles exactly how it had been accomplished, as the basis for my speech.
Since "dis-ordering" was one of the trendy buzzwords of the day, I described my action as "re-ordering".
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