Eno says he hates talking about himself. “I’m not interested in that personality aspect of being an artist. It’s all based on the idea that artists are automatically interesting people. I can tell you they aren’t. Their art might be very interesting, but as people they are no more or less interesting than anybody else. And I’m really not at all interested in talking about Brian Eno. His ideas, however, I think have something to recommend them.”
So what is Brian Eno working on at the moment, I ask. “I’m interested in the idea of generative music as a sort of model for how society or politics could work. I’m working out the ideas I’m interested in, about how you make a working society rather than a dysfunctional one like the one we live in at the moment — by trying to make music in a new way. I’m trying to see what kinds of models and and structures make the music I want to hear, and then I’m finding it’s not a bad idea to try to think about making societies in that way.”
This is an interesting interview, but it becomes a bit confrontational. Eno is understandably tired of talking about the past. He discusses his latest composition Reflection, which I reviewed here. I also talked with Peter Chilvers, the designer of the app version of Reflection, on this episode of The Next Track podcast.