ENO: NOT A FRUIT SALT* The creative arts such as choreography, composing and play-writing as well as the performing arts such as dancing, concertizing and acting share the social environment. It is a social environment that is at once fragmented and increasingly unified. The artist is at once a remote observer in relation to society and an integral part of that society. This polarization, this schizophrenia of experience has been paradoxically taking place in a society that is utterly transforming the conditions in which the artist plays his role. At the core of these social conditions is the unit of social organization, the global society, in which the artist is increasingly participating. Artists are availing themselves of a rich tapestry of resources, richer than at any time in history. As I watched Artscape: Brian Eno in Conversation1I could not help but reflect on some of these ideas. I won’t tell you all about Brian Eno. Readers of this prose-poem can google his life, his work and the many efflorescing concepts that spin out of his mind. The many internet sites on Brian Eno, especially Wikipedia, will save me repeating what you can easily read for yourself. But I will make some personal remarks in this prose-poem format. My comments here resulted from listening to this stimulating half hour interview with Brian Eno whose work is at the forefront of music, art and technology. –Ron Price with thanks to 1ABC1 July 21, 2009, 10:00-10:30 p.m. We both graduated back in the ‘60s, Brian, but you got stuck into music in a big way as I headed out of that form of the arts teaching a hundred students a week, raising three kids & with many Bahá'í communities keeping my nose to the proverbial grindstone: a life which was not without its play of creativities.... Your professional music career was just beginning when my post-secondary life was taking-off and there I stayed until the new millennium. Your flamboyance, performing personality and, as you say, some deal with destiny, fate or chance took you into highly eclectic & ambient electronic music treatments as well as a list of stuff as long as your arm which I could not possibly put into this poem. I have got to hand it to you, Brian.....your creativity-like that of any unmerited grace- as Annie Dillard once put it, stimulated my sensory emporium listening as you put into words the nature of your experience....your views and your modus vivendi/operandi.... carry on carrying-on, Brian: thanks a lot.... * Eno is a fast-acting, gastrointestinal product, a name for effervescent fruit salts. It is used as an antacid and reliever of bloatedness. It was invented in the 1850s by James Crossley Eno. Ron Price 23 July 2009 Posted for Hip Forums On: 1 August 2010
