A Year with Outsized Gonads: The Brian Eno Diaries

Jogging through Chiswick Park this morning, and observing the garbage trucks, it dawned on me that the western world's garbage disposal system is alarmingly unintuitive. One wonders if it's a reflection of the intentionality of the propositional systems we have devised as part of our scientific program, especially since about 1850 (mental note: language as determined by mechanism: discuss)? Anyway, I'm with Rorty on these matters: a pragmatist to the core! Came home to the happy news that I've been awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Musical Ecosystematics at Putnam University. I'm to give a talk there this semester, and I'm playing with the title, 'Rorty, Quine, and the Intentionality of Language: A Modest Proposal for Improving Garbage Collection in Our Cities'. I like to think of the title first and have it disinter the content, if you will.

Speaking of Quines, Robert is schedulued to come over to the studio this afternoon to lay some parts down on a new project we're devising that recombinates emo music through the lense of a somewhat refractory chaos system. I've devised the system itself in consultation with Dr Emery Lewis at Lancashire Polytechnic. It should be fascinating. I am particularly taken with the whining/screaming dialectic in emo music, though obviously it's all dumb energy at core.

Stopped off at Stoppard's Books but they have not yet received the folio collection of mid 18th century lithographs of deformed Japanese women I ordered. Apparently it's been held up by Customs. The British are such prudes. When will they learn that sex, sex sex is at the core of all great art!

Excerpt from some studio chatter I happened to record while working on Paul's album:

Herbie: What the fuck are you doing to my shit [I think he meant keyboards -- BE], man?

Brian: I'm treating it, or them.

Herbie: Treating, huh? Look, man, I'll treat my own fucking keyboards from now on.

Me: Well, Paul asked me to do treatments.

Herbie: Why don't you go treat some other shit, egghead?

Me: Fair enough. Pino should have my tea ready.

Herbie: Nobody touches my shit from now own, do you understand?

Me: Any Christina Aguilera or Jonny Lang stories, Herbie? I'm a big fan of both.

Herbie: Hey, fuck you, man!

Me: Did Jonny play any killer licks during downtime? Any off-the-cuff covers -- jamming, or whatever?

Herbie: Leave me the fuck alone!

Hope to use this for an upcoming project.

That is sad. Let's just pretend he's still alive. I have great plans for him and Brian's session together. Also, yes, you're meant to add your own entries, as Andy just did.

We lack the vocabulary for smells in general: a peculiarly Western failing. How, for example, should one describe the smell directly beneath a woman's breast? Discuss.

I laughed at that Andy K post for ten minutes straight.

Thursday 26th February 2009

Cloudy, mild day in London. When the mail arrives I see that the postman is wearing shorts for the first time this year.
Can't decide whether to have croissant or weetabix for breakfast, in the end decide to place the weetabix in the croissant. I think it needs more milk, will look into this again. Take a call from Nick Clegg, he's looking for recommendations for some drum and bass records, can't think of any but give him David (Bowie)'s number.

Do a bit of work on the generative ringtone I'm creating for the iPhone, trying to create something which is recognisably a ringtone but is different each time it rings. Not sure if I'll be able to square that circle.

Tessa Jowell's still badgering me into being artistic director for the Olympics opening ceremony. Really can't be excited about this project despite, or more likely because, of the high profile it will give me. I suspect that anything I suggest will be shelved in favour of glib, nationalistic spectacle. The chance to work with the female beach volleyball team is quite appealing though.

^^ that's good stuff

Awake since 7. Birds won't shut up. How I wish they would perish. I should take a shotgun out onto the roof and shoot 'em. Tape it for this future project where I have to go to Swindon with lemons and wellies. I shall do no such thing. Phoned video company who sent tickets for Paddington. It is an outrage. Bryan still grumbling because I washed his curtains when he went out to Archway yesterday lunchtime. It was all "you just want to find work." It's a disgrace but one is expected to be charitable to the old. Cameron's son dies so that is excellent news. A Tory victory is sorely needed - will see those prancing old Barri Chatt socialist queens getting the boot they deserve. Hop on the 274 but driver loudly derides me for having my flies open. I did them up approximately 0.75 seconds after he pointed it out so he was obviously a sad pervert. Heigh ho. To Joe Allen's where I gave Han Bennink and Patrick Mower lunch. We sat outside afterwards and watched the ducks until an over officious policeman moved us on. He obviously didn't fancy me - clearly he is a sick, dessicated individual. Dodged up side streets and walked home for tradiola. Thought of George Eliot.

I can't shake the notion that this is Eno himself posting under a variety of usernames.

I find I have caught my hand in the sink’s waste disposal unit, this a secondary product of a morning spent recording various household tones for later examination. "Help help." Strange to write those words. Still, though there’s no one around to hear my cries of distress, I feel I should communicate my stress in some manner.

It occurs to me that cries of distress form one of the few truly universal tongues, transcending language and even biology. Also that such voicings are one of the few communicative strategies that acurately transmit emotional states from one to another. To hear the cry of distress is to become distressed in turn. Perhaps the language of sexual ecstacy is similar?

I am becoming increasingly dizzy. Perhaps I have cut my finger somewhere down in there and don’t know it. A troubling thought. (The speechlike cooing we employ in order to imbue infants with a state of comfort?) Suspect I will miss dinner with the Martins this evening. "Help help."

Reading Erich Heller on Nietzsche and the inbuilt paradoxes of Eternal Recurrence. If the ghost is fallible then so will the Ubermensch be, and so Nietzsche has no alternative but to paint himself into a corner of reassuring madness and actually become - or usurp - Zarathustra. I feel like that every day from the sickening stares I get from idiots in the street. "When are you doing another Roxy album, Brian?" until one just wants to screech for mortality. In the bathroom this morning there was a blister on my scrotum. Rushed to Harley Street urologist who kept his countenance. Said there were some good dressing gowns on sale in Debenhams. I blame the Socialists. In the evening I did fishcakes and salad for Bryan but he fidgeted and sighed all the way through Time Team until I had no choice but to turn over and watch the dreadful Friday Night Project. His tastes are real pleb stuff. I don't know why I stick with him. Made my excuses and rushed to bed. Thought of Thomas Carlyle landing inadequately on a vaulting horse. Traditional antics.

Contenderizer wins.

A health farm weekend in rural Staffordshire.

The ceiling fans kept me awake all night. I'd only wired them up to tape them so I could sample their rhythms for the Gyles Brandreth/U2 thing but I'll have to have a word with the porter about it. I can't move again. Not twice in 25 years. Bryan all in a tizzy 'cos he can't find his tweezers David Whitfield gave him in Singapore in 1947. Well it was a sight more than DW ever gave me but some people are never going to be happy. Met Chris and Gwyneth in Regent's Park and we set up deckchairs - £5 per five minutes! Very expensive!! - but cloudy, wet afternoon spoiled by that awful bore Wiley with his Ghettos Blaster wanting me to hear more of his beats. Worse even than the ones AN Wilson showed me last week. Went to Paris Theatre to record Just A Minimalist. Patrick Pulsinger was my team captain and on the other side it was Ron Browz and Lance Percival. God, Ron has gone to seed - a far cry from the dashing young man of those dazzling Morocco days. I was indecent. Hopefully David Hatch will edit it out tho'. Bed at eleven. Thinking of Mandalay and then David Davis' speech about Britain becoming a Police State. Traditional. Those uniforms.

To freezing bollocks community centre in Greenwich for first day of rehearsals of this new play The Rhodium Fly. Kenwright had a go at me straightway when I dropped the book. "It weighed 20 tons and you dropped it on my fuckin' foot!" he belched. This is where he lacks grace. Dreared thro' scenes and EVERY suggestion I made was rebuffed. I wonder why they bothered casting me at all. I took out my Oblique Strategies box but Annette Crosbie was all sighs and "put it away, Brian." Doodled some riffs for Cale on my oscillator that I bought from Phillips Electrical in 1969 for £1.19s/6d but was censured for not sticking to the script. I hate this lousy rotten show and I hope the show and everyone in it dies on its stinking arse. Bought some specially inscribed presentation plates for BK and cast. Staggered home thro' slush only to find Bryan in a state 'cos he burned the Greggs cakebox with his fags. "Well I don't know how THAT happened" he mumbled. One finds a face to meet the face. I'm stuck with this old decrepit and it's flattening and tiring, it really is. Went to C&A for lamb chops only to find it had changed into Primark. If I'd known that yesterday I would have got some extra Zantac. Watched Extreme Fishing With Robson Green (dish) and I retired to bed thinking of thrusting casts. Tradiola but I cut me big toe so I have to remember that I can't keep getting away with it.

I abhor this bogus Pop Music business and its feeble flaccidity. In rehearsals today that tawny tit Manzanera started niggling away unprofessionally at my delivery until I could take no more. "Oh yes," sneered Kenwright, "you're just sore because I've taken all your nice, clever little bits away, all your little theories and squiggles...I do not want this to be a Brian Eno play...that is not what I want...none of these lines can be thrown away...I want to draw out the play's essential SERIOUSNESS." This from someone who's directing a dredged-up slice of boom knicker slapstick Swansea Rep tat. Departed Greenwich in a suicidal state. A bunch of tourists came up to me and smiled "Hello, Brian!" and I told them to fuck off and darted up Vine Street dreaming of sailors. In my protracted decline solitude is the only answer I'm afraid.

To South Bank Studios to do Whose Goldfish? Gary Wilmot was on my team & Willem Brueker & Maureen Nolan on the other. I recognised Michelle McManus' fish straightway but kept schtumm. Total ITV rep tat but as Laurena warned me I have to be less choosy about the work these days. Watched ELP Live At Montreux 1997 with Bryan on Sky Arts & we marvelled at how much higher the standards were then & went to bed singing "Forty Thousand Sailors On The Tee At Bali-Bali" & other old favourites from the Twenties. Traditional. Greg Lake's serrated yet serenely elegant neck.

To Sainsbury's to purchase the U2 record. I didn't get a copy in the post. I haven't spoken to Bono in months. I wonder if he's gone off me. On sale for £9.97 but if I'd bought Daniel O'Donnell as well I could have got it for £6.97. It's so tat it might as well be Val Doonican. Couldn't find my bits on it anywhere. It's a disgrace. Rang Laurena and asked her to get me out of the U2 setup. It's just so dismal and dull when compared with the happy atmosphere I get with the Coldplay team - the old spirit has evaporated and their conversation is so dire one just wants to MACHINE GUN them. Also Adam continually says "ekcsetera" which sticks in my craw. Rang Stanley to see what he was doing. To Il Barbino for lunch. It's changed to Robert Dyas. Heigh ho.

In the afternoon, to HMV to look for Val Doonican records I could deconstruct. The only recordings available were on Compact Disc not Vinyl or Cassette and one was driven out of the shop altogether by their irritating habit of playing loud pretentious bang music when one is searching and needs to concentrate. So I went home & took down Bryan's curtains & washed them & washed the walls. Filthy dirty brown from his Capstan Full Strengths & I had to refill the bowl thrice & every time it was filthy brown. He came in halfway through & the whole deadly circle began again: "Oh, Gawd 'elp us" and "You just want to find work" and "It's my flat & I'll smoke if I want to." I sharply retorted that she could do as she liked as long as I wasn't there at the time. Got Cumberland Pie and wine gums and sat down to watch Morecambe & Wise on Dave and that calmed things down a bit. Tradiola. Ernie's cunning wink. I'm weak I'm afraid.

OK, marc, I'm calling that one as being from yours.

There is all this talk about a Sun Box Set. I've no idea what they're talking about. It seems to be more of that Rock and Roll which has led to the degeneration and barbarism of society today. Walked from Whitechapel to Dunwich on foot and reflected how far more utterly civilised the values of my youth were. Depressing Graffitti to be seen everywhere. This is what happens when a society rejects Christian Values - the necessity to serve a Greater Good, hence National Service - for unexamined and unrestricted materialism. You can kick the money lenders out of the temple but they'll only go and build a bigger one next door & then end up buying the temple anyway. Money is no good without civilisation. Elvis bestrode the world but he'll never be a Leonard Woolf.

yeah, but it had "My Happiness / that's when your heartaches begin" his first two recordings as a free 7"...

I reflect on my hapless position as a sensitive prince trudging through a wasteland of mud and puddle beggars. I remember when I was in Memphis in 1975 trying to persuade Col Parker to get Elvis to record "Seven Deadly Finns." Then I remembered I was actually in Maidstone, looking for some William Empson first editions in the local Oxfam.