Thoughts from Eno

Sister Susan alerted me to this post by Dr. Pangloss at Prospect Magazine:

here’s a short piece by Brian Eno (one of my first heros in music – along with John Cage) that was retweeted by GreatDismal (aka William Gibson): The death of uncool.

“There’s a whole generation of people able to access almost anything from almost anywhere, and they don’t have the same localised stylistic sense that my generation grew up with. It’s all alive, all “now,” in an ever-expanding present, be it Hildegard of Bingen or a Bollywood soundtrack. The idea that something is uncool because it’s old or foreign has left the collective consciousness.

I think this is good news. As people become increasingly comfortable with drawing their culture from a rich range of sources—cherry-picking whatever makes sense to them—it becomes more natural to do the same thing with their social, political and other cultural ideas. The sharing of art is a precursor to the sharing of other human experiences, for what is pleasurable in art becomes thinkable in life.”

(although I don’t agree with what he says about classical not similarly bifurcating.)

I’d agree with the sentiment, and with the quibble.