brian eno and the innocence of the moment

musician brian eno wrote this about one-time collaborator peter schmidt with whom eno developed the “oblique strategies” cards. a deck of over one hundred cards, each with a phrase to provide a direction to help move the creative process onwards.

“His work was very much a personal inquiry, a continuous questioning of deeper and deeper assumptions, a delight in finding himself in new territory without answers, and thus innocent. We are always innocent, unless, from laziness or for convenience, we decide to overlook the novelty of the moment, this particular now. It seemed to me that Peter was more capable than anybody else I have ever known of following that understanding through in his actions. He was always alert to those little byways of thought that might open out onto whole new vistas,and he followed them with a quiet kind of courage.”
these grainy pics are copies of images that came with my first copy of “before and after science”, a beautiful assemblage of words and music ranging from the sound poems of dadaist kurt schwitters to the pseudo punk homage to the talking heads in the form of the anagrammatically titled 'king's lead hat', through to the spacy and beautiful romantic tone poem 'spider and i'..




the images were directly connected to the creation of the music on this disc.
these lyrics are from one of the finer songs on this disc entitled “by this river”. the lyrics are evocative of a time for me and then with each listening and rereading, provide a colour and a sense of emotions connected to a scene in my mind somewhat like this:


BY THIS RIVER

Here we are
Stuck by this river,
You and I
Underneath a sky that's ever falling down, down, down
Ever falling down.
Through the day
As if on an ocean
Waiting here,
Always failing to remember why we came, came, came:
I wonder why we came.
You talk to me
as if from a distance
And I reply
With impressions chosen from another time, time, time,
From another time.

the most powerful and meaningful experiences reach deeply into a moment that lasts through eternity. expressing those moments in words or paint or music is the gift of the very fortunate who either through their innate skill or the serendipity of being available to the pure flow of creativity that rushes through and around us constantly (but of which we are painfully almost entirely unaware) can channel the deep mapped insights into the human experience of this world.