eno the blessed

He walked in. Both of his feet touched the ground. I heard them. A hush fell over
the bald heads in the room. Thud, thud. No air showed under his feet when he put them down - I looked. Gravity did apply upon such lofty heights. Also noted that He wore dark pants and a dark sweater. It made perfect sense. It was night and it was chilly. Not even Eno can ignore the elements and neglect creature comfort. Towards that end too, he was supplied a bottle of cognac set on a little table beside his chair on the low stage. (during the course of the talk (about an hour and a half) he drank approx. 1/3 of it).

That was fine! There were only about 50 people in the audience that night. We had been supplied with nothing to drink. We all sat on the floor close (or maybe in chairs, but we felt small and they felt like the floor, anyway). We were tiny, and the tiniest of the lucky and the hip; but still just acolytes at the feet of the master, hanging on his every word, noting his every small gesture or movement. If he looked to the side when he laughed, everyone noticed. When he drank water, we all watched his adams apple. Several women talked about that after, smoking post-coital/lecture cigarettes in the rain. Later we all practiced doing things, like him, just... so!

Years later, many of us still retain those "Enoisms", as we call them, that we
picked up that night from such avid study. We don't remember what exactly he did (if he did anything (or everything)), since no one brought a camera, but we do know now and we see it in each other when we make gestures that seem unnatural or pretentious - one can tell - and those we call Enoistic. We know that perhaps their origins are Enoical and thus contrived. We are torn between shame and pride - how can we be so slavishly apish and still have had the intelligence to be there to get such inoculation? Its enough to drive the weak to the drugs of the week or religious zeal.

We 50-odd "Enophytes" all hate each other. Is it because of our unwillingness to share and thus dilute the experience? Or is it because we are all competitors in a highly esoteric field that is invisible to most people; where we are affecting the most subtle perfect scars, the perfect attitudes of hot-coolness, passionate distance and restrained allusion to anarchy and chaos? We look f---ed up, but we all went to university and we're all white and American, so deep down we know we'll be OK. The ineffable confidence of karma.

Somehow we seem to keep meeting like jackals drawn together by an invisible scent trail of the blood of a fresh kill, or like priests scratching at other over a fallen altar boy. Certain aesthetic confluences concentrate us in odd parts of cities – or weirder still, way off in some odd rural leyline crossover. Its always surprising, but frequent enough to be predictable enough to be avoided. But I never pass up these events. I know who I'll see and how I'll feel, but I go anyway because I want to feel nauseous and I want to feel indignation. But I also want to feel that my subtleties and my Enoistic "scars" are understood. If only there and for that short time. Its enough. When we do meet face to face we vacillate (oscillate?) between scathing each other by mocking obvious or apparent "Enoisms", and lavishing excessive (insincere and envious) praise for someone's clever Enoissitudes. Over time I've noticed that these tics and habits and airs have become stylized and exaggerated and codified. We all understand them and what they signify. There is a tendency toward formalism and regularity in our deployment of our repertoire of Enoisms. We recognize each other by them. We acknowledge status amongst ourselves by them.

We appreciate the subtlety and artistic modification of them. It is our own secret
language. With this language, so far removed from the source of its inspiration and so
artificial to its actual users, we can find a common ground from which to conduct our pale imitations of musical alchemy and soul enriching philosophical platitudinousness, with our own hollow rewards and gilded cups. Not to mention sacred rights and mating rituals. Because we've named them Enoistic, they are, and we are sure he would do it the same as we.



The paramount question for many through years of debate remains: Did Eno in his infinite wisdom choose that particular time and place to appear to us - only those that he knew could be there and would be there? Or did we do so unconsciously - we wisely choose to be there as though GUIDED BY VOICES or an UNSEEN HAND?

Sometimes I bum out and think it wasn't that big a deal - I was only there because of some chick, and that there is no "secret language" and all that. Sometimes I'm not sure if Eno should be so influential, that maybe having someone like him around is not so good for artists. Maybe his Santo oughta be pulled outta the niche! Can it be that I've wasted thousands of dollars on adams apple enhancements and throat excersises in my attempt to emulate his attractiveness to three women who smoke in the rain? Fooey!

Other times I'm pretty sure that he's not quite human - maybe a demigod of some kind, like Madonna.

Usually I just settle for the good old tried and true explanation that is a variation on the 100 monkeys/100 typewriters/100 years idea. One that seems to apply to a good many explorers, scientists, innovators. He stumbled into it. He was walking along and stepped in it. He was exactly the right person there at exactly the right time. To paraphrase Salvatore Dali explaining his art in his 'moustache' book: (Eno was) the right kind of honey for the right kind of fly at exactly the right time.

Not many artists have had such a profound impact, after all. Not even Boards of Canada. The night I saw him he didn't say anything too remarkable like "Burn the flag!" or, "wear a tie!" Rather he seemed the urbane spokesman of a chin-stroking
placid revolution, where one just wills the bad and ugly of the world away and poof! All
is good and mysterious in a golden way. Or not...

I do remember though that he was very much at ease, well spoken, friendly and charming in a Cary Grant/Bela Lugosi/E.T. sort of way. He was also very compact and self contained, seeming as though about twice his mass was contained inside him. You don't get that impression from people very often. Of course, my impressions were skewed because he was one of my heroes, so I could be way off. Plus, I had dropped a lot of acid. After the first couple of tabs didn't kick in after an hour, we took a couple more. About an hour after that, they all kicked in at once. I think acid makes me a better observer though. Everything is so much more... distinct. And because its so clear, it must be more real than one is accustomed to, and its heightened reality means that it must be more true. Simple logic.

But in all things as in even plain old music, everyone has their own
perception of reality. Some people say that the only time they ever have seen him, he was coming down out of the sun wearing only a beach towel, which, when he landed and stood over them, fell off. They swore he was a saint because he carried a "wooden staff". I've never seen that! Can't even imagine.
I do have a friend that worked with Mr. E. for a while though, M.B., and he does have some rather interesting anecdotes! But those are other stories I save to get "the mood" going.

Obliviety and chiarusco