Brian Eno Can't Stop Swimming
June 15, 2021
I have always known Brian Eno’s name, but never knew that much about him or his work. I heard an interview with Stefan Sagmeister where he cited Brian Eno’s Diary as a highly influential and formative book in his career.
Fortunately, the book, which had been out of print for a long time, was recently republished. In A Year with Swollen Appendices: Brian Eno's Diary, the musician / producer / artist / dad / husband / collaborator spends one calendar year recording his day-to-day.
Apart from hanging with David Bowie, U2, and periodic jaunts to Egypt, New York, or elsewhere for either exotic parties or recording sessions or some other unclear yet creative purposes, I was struck by how simple his life seemed. Many of his days consist of walking to his studio, working for the day, doodling in Photoshop, messing with computer programs, cooking delicious dinners, and hanging with his wife and daughters.
Eno also loves swimming, and it’s a regular occurrence throughout the book, which highlights what I believe to be his most powerful skill: he never stops moving. He is always pushing forward into new territory, and this constant forward motion is the fuel for his work and life. He’s like a shark that needs to keep moving, in order to keep fresh, oxygenated water flowing over its gills.
At 70, Eno is approaching the tail end of an insanely dense, varied, and prolific career. He has done way too much work to cover without writing a book. I always like to go back to the early part of an artist’s career, to the one idea that caught fire and got them a foothold, the one work that planted their flag on the map. It’s not always their best work, but it has an energy that I find really interesting. For Eno, it’s safe to say that this was his 1977 work Ambient 1 / Music for Airports.
With the release of this album, Eno effectively created what we now know as ambient music. As he described it, “Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting.”
77 Million Paintings (2006) is an audiovisual work that combines generative music with a video installation that layers video in a way that creates almost endless new combinations. This concept of generative art is a thread that has been with Eno through much of his career. Although you no longer need to purchase the 2-DVD set for $75, as it can be experienced on YouTube. The work continues to be shown publicly, and has even been projected onto the Sydney Opera House:
Most recently, Eno has been hired by Sonos to create a new radio station consisting entirely of his own unreleased work.
This Eno interview with Rick Rubin from the always excellent Broken Record podcast is full of good stuff. More memorably, Eno and Rubin talk about artists falling into two camps: cowboys and farmers. The cowboys are interested in exploring new lands — once they know a place, they pack up and ride to the next place. The farmers, on the other hand, are interested in working and cultivating one piece of land. They want to tend to it, to improve the soil, to see what they can grow and harvest.
After spending a fair amount of time in Eno-land, my main takeaway is one that seems to be a recurring theme with any prolific creative person: don’t stop moving, and be open to new ways of doing things.
As Mr. Eno says: “The biology of purpose keeps my nose above the surface.”