Manafonistas

Heute erscheint offiziell das neue Album REFLECTION von Brian Eno. (Ian is entranced, and maybe he will write another story on the album starring our beloved DJ from another age, Mireia Moreorless). Ich habe es schon einige Zeit auf dem Computer, aber nun das erste Mal die CD über die grosse Stereoanlage laufen lassen. Ich hatte eine grosse Tasse grünen Tee zubereitet, und liess die Musik in all ihren Feinheiten auf mich wirken. Es sind ja verschiedene „Soundschleifen“ aktiv, die sich aber stärker wandeln als auf Klassikern wie DISCREET MUSIC oder MUSIC FOR AIRPORTS. Jeder „Tonspur“ ist eine (digital gespeicherte) Anweisung zugeteilt, wie sie sich zu entfalten habe. So ist schon mal für beträchtliche Variationsbreite der einzelnen „Inputs“ gesorgt. Die Überlappungen sorgen also für unendliche Vielfalt im Zuge sich nie identisch wiederholender Wiederholungen. Das Tolle ist, dass diese Beschreibungen absolut ernüchternd sind, die Musik aber eher das Gegenteil davon, sinnlich, traumartig, ein Fluss. Nur die Oberflächenstruktur suggeriert generative Systeme, Kybernetik, Künstlichkeit. In der Tiefe, die hier kein metaphysischer Begriff ist, sondern den Sprung in den Fluss avisiert, das gute alte Loslassen, herrscht Staunen, Verwunderung, Trance. „But if an algorithm composed this music, is Brian Eno the author of it?“, Kitty Empire asks in her review, and I like to answer: „Yes, Kitty, he’s the author! You know why? It’s his handwriting! And: the music has no story, but soul.“ Und, erst beim Hören auf der grossen Anlage, kommt das Element der puren Überraschung hinzu. Oft scheint sich die Musik dem Nichts zu nähern, es gibt vollendet klingende Verschwindeklänge, und aus dem sanften Sog des Nichts kommt dann plötzlich ein fast lauter glockenheller Ton, der etwas Aufrüttelndes hat, aufreissendem Licht und einer Marimba nicht unähnlich. Man darf also durchaus, bei REFLECTION, einer übrigens klanglich absolut highendigen Aufnahme, Kristalle in Drei D, Landschaften vorüberziehen sehen, man darf die Musik persönlich nehmen. Ja, und ich tauche derzeit, beim Hören des Albums, in einen alten Gedichtband von Jürgen Becker ein, den ich aus dem Speicher runtergeholt habe, kehre immer zu den Klängen, den Worten zurück, dem Raum dazwischen. Besorgen Sie sich einfach mal ein schmales Lyrikbändchen von Herrn Becker, nach dem Zufallsprinzip, und halten Sie die Zeit an, wenn die Musik läuft. Kinderleicht, geht von allein, und immer eine Illusion.

2016/2017

The consensus among most of my friends seems to be that 2016 was a terrible year, and the beginning of a long decline into something we don’t even want to imagine.

2016 was indeed a pretty rough year, but I wonder if it’s the end – not the beginning – of a long decline. Or at least the beginning of the end….for I think we’ve been in decline for about 40 years, enduring a slow process of de-civilisation, but not really quite noticing it until now. I’m reminded of that thing about the frog placed in a pan of slowly heating water…

This decline includes the transition from secure employment to precarious employment, the destruction of unions and the shrinkage of workers’ rights, zero hour contracts, the dismantling of local government, a health service falling apart, an underfunded education system ruled by meaningless exam results and league tables, the increasingly acceptable stigmatisation of immigrants, knee-jerk nationalism, and the concentration of prejudice enabled by social media and the internet.

This process of decivilisation grew out of an ideology which sneered at social generosity and championed a sort of righteous selfishness. (Thatcher: “Poverty is a personality defect”. Ayn Rand: “Altruism is evil”). The emphasis on unrestrained individualism has had two effects: the creation of a huge amount of wealth, and the funnelling of it into fewer and fewer hands. Right now the 62 richest people in the world are as wealthy as the bottom half of its population combined. The Thatcher/Reagan fantasy that all this wealth would ‘trickle down’ and enrich everybody else simply hasn’t transpired. In fact the reverse has happened: the real wages of most people have been in decline for at least two decades, while at the same time their prospects – and the prospects for their children – look dimmer and dimmer. No wonder people are angry, and turning away from business-as-usual government for solutions. When governments pay most attention to whoever has most money, the huge wealth inequalities we now see make a mockery of the idea of democracy. As George Monbiot said: “The pen may be mightier than the sword, but the purse is mightier than the pen”.

Last year people started waking up to this. A lot of them, in their anger, grabbed the nearest Trump-like object and hit the Establishment over the head with it. But those were just the most conspicuous, media-tasty awakenings. Meanwhile there’s been a quieter but equally powerful stirring: people are rethinking what democracy means, what society means and what we need to do to make them work again. People are thinking hard, and, most importantly, thinking out loud, together. I think we underwent a mass disillusionment in 2016, and finally realised it’s time to jump out of the saucepan.

This is the start of something big. It will involve engagement: not just tweets and likes and swipes, but thoughtful and creative social and political action too. It will involve realising that some things we’ve taken for granted – some semblance of truth in reporting, for example – can no longer be expected for free. If we want good reporting and good analysis, we’ll have to pay for it. That means MONEY: direct financial support for the publications and websites struggling to tell the non-corporate, non-establishment side of the story. In the same way if we want happy and creative children we need to take charge of education, not leave it to ideologues and bottom-liners. If we want social generosity, then we must pay our taxes and get rid of our tax havens. And if we want thoughtful politicians, we should stop supporting merely charismatic ones.

Inequality eats away at the heart of a society, breeding disdain, resentment, envy, suspicion, bullying, arrogance and callousness. If we want any decent kind of future we have to push away from that, and I think we’re starting to.

There’s so much to do, so many possibilities. 2017 should be a surprising year.

– Brian