Life of Brian

Eno Eases the Bite of It

I was in a relationship with a painter for a couple of years.  She had an admirable work ethic, painting six hours a day until the light ran out.  My contribution was to make playlists and, usually, make myself scarce.  She was open to any genre.  Her one requirement was that the music had to have a drive to it. I figured out that it could be a slow drive. In fact, the more I made these playlists, which were usually six hours, the more varied that drive could be. A slow drive, a fast one, just as long as it the brushstrokes kept stroking.  I made her mixes nearly every day for a while, and some of them are still saved.  Thanks to YouTube music I can take a trip back to 2019, the year before the world shut down.  Making playlists is not a bad pastime when the world does shut down, when this ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no fooling around.

I’m looking at one called “Ease the Bite of It,” which comes from Billy Strayhorn’s “Lush Life.”  As a 19-year-old living with his parents, Strayhorn writes, with the brio of Cole Porter, “A week in Paris could ease the bite of it,” when he was still stuck in Pittsburgh. Fake it ‘til you make it, Billy Strayhorn. The bite of it is unavoidable, but as long as you are still making something, you can keep the enemy confused while you still have the muse.  This mix has four versions of “Lush Life,” including Geri Allen and Annie Ross, not the most well known one by Johnny Hartman and John Coltrane, because I had used it before.  The painter told me the music should move, but she didn’t specify the speed.  I thought of the scene in Julian Schnabel’s Basquiat, when Geoffrey Wright, in his spectacular performance, was painting to Miles Davis’s “Flamenco Sketches.”  The song was about painting, and Basquiat as subject for Miles was objective correlative.  He embodied what it was all about. I’m looking at this mix and it’s pretty on brand.  I have Renée Fleming singing Puccini, “Chi ll bel sogno di Doretta” from La rondine, Björk, “So Broken,” the second movement of Bartok’s second violin concerto with Gil Shaham and Chicago, Glenn Gould playing the Adagio from Bach’s Concerto in D Minor, Elvis Costello, “American Without Tears,” Duke Ellington, “Melancholia,” Nat King Cole, “My Sugar is So Refined,”  the Emerson String Quartet paying the first movement of Mozart’s “Dissonance,” Bob Howard & His Boys, “If You’re a Viper,” Leonard Cohen, “Take This Waltz,” John Lennon, “I Don’t Wanna Be a Solider,” David Oistrakh playing the second movement of Prokofiev’s Second Violin Concert, P.J. Harvey, “Good Fortune,” Paul Bley, “Caravan Suite III,” Ohio Players, “Love Rollercoaster,” Steely Dan, “Daddy Don’t Live in that New York City No More,” Paul Simon, “Wristband,” Tom Waits, “Temptation,” Pixies, “There Goes My Gun,” David Bowie, “Breaking Glass,” Philip Glass, “Pruit Igoe,” Stevie Wonder, “Golden Lady,”  Sarah Vaughan, “I Didn’t Know What Time it Was,” Louis Armstrong, “My Sweet,” Brian Eno, “Burning Airlines Give You So Much More.”  This mix was made for six hours of painting, so even if this seems like a long list, it is merely a fragment.  I admired her painting and her devotion to it, and this was a way for me to be a part of it.  The relationship ended a few years ago, and, apart from taking instructions on how to send her stuff (including many tubes of paint), I have not been in touch with her since.  She did not leave any artwork behind, and all I have are these lists.

It has been a month since I saw Gary Hustwit’s Eno, though because the film is made to have different material every time you see it, I didn’t really see it. It was as if the film was in perpetual rotation. Life has a soundtrack that can change like the weather. Or, the soundtrack is a premonition. It comes first. I was utterly besotted with Eno, the man, and how much he left out of his story. We know he was in a band, but we are never told the band is Roxy Music, though we see an awkward moment when Brian Ferry, Roxy Music’s lead singer, presents Eno with an award on live television. Because they are English, they are polite and show no emotions whatsoever, but the subtext is whatever led to Eno snubbing the Hall of Fame when Roxy got their induction. We also don’t know about the car accident that interrupted the making of Eno’s Another Green World (for more on that, see Geeta Dayal’s excellent 33 1/3 book), and shifted his brain from songs with lyrics to the ambient music and production work for which he is best known. He was in the hospital and heard the rain coming down. He wanted to do something like that.

It is here where I must step in, because there are many of us who have the most love for this incarnation of Eno. Those albums-Before and After Science, Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy, Here Come the Warm Jets, Another Green World— were strange enough to exist, but so eccentric, they hit weirdos like me exactly where the needed to be hit.

But if you study the logistics
And heuristics of the mystics
You will find that their minds rarely move in a line
So it's much more realistic
To abandon such ballistics
And resign to be trapped on a leaf in the vine
So it's much more realistic
To abandon such ballistics
And resign to be trapped on a leaf in the vine

If you appreciate these Eno albums, you have attitude. You don’t need to translate it. You are untranslatable. If you study the logistics and heuristics of the mystics, you will find their minds rarely move in a line. People who love these albums have minds that rarely move in a line. Cheeky cheeky, naughty sneaky. Dear Reader, I have listened to “Burning Airlines Give You So Much More” on planes. If you truly get Eno, you’ve done the same. Because we all know where we’re heading. We’ve already tempted fate. Fate will do what it will do. When I write, I like to have the feeling of fearlessness. That’s why I like writing to Eno, which I am doing right now. I know that some things cannot be un-fucked up. You know it, and so does Eno. We all have our ways of enduring.

When I got back home, I found a message on the door
Sweet Regina's gone to China cross-legged on the floor
Of a burning jet that's smoothly flying
Burning airlines give you so much more

Pretty dark, but Eno sings it so blithely.