She had on a knit blue hat and thick wool winter coat, so where she stood she appeared stark against the hopeless morning sky. And, crossing the full length of park grown muddy by the days of rain, she found relief for herself on a bench just beside Brian Eno.
“I’m Brian Eno,” was what he told her when she did. He looked at her with a smile. “I coined the term ‘ambient music’ after collaborating extensively with krautrock musicians throughout the nineteen-seventies, and I also composed the 1983 record Apollo, songs from which have appeared in over three major motion pictures.”
“Hello, Brian Eno,” the woman said softly. “My name is Dorothy.”
Brian Eno beamed: that was really something. He found that he could not express what it meant to him in words, could not faithfully reproduce what he was feeling in that moment, and so in silence abandoned absolutely any attempt. Instead he went on with his sitting, fixed stiffly atop the park bench on that dreary winter day, peering into the horizon that opened up before them. A pleasant grin hung loosely from both of his ears.
“Grandma,” a small boy said to Dorothy as he approached the bench. At the sound of this new voice, Brian Eno jumped. “I just swinged on the swings,” the boy went on. “And it was really awesome.”
“I’m Brian Eno,” Brian Eno told the boy. He went down on one knee and took the boy’s chin in his hand. “With my 1978 album Music for Airports,” Brian Eno said, “I made a lasting contribution to the history of western music, though it was not until the nineteen-nineties that it was rightly recognized as both an artistic and commercial success.”
The boy looked at Dorothy.
“This is Dalton,” Dorothy said to Brian Eno. Brian Eno stood slowly to his feet. “Dalton’s a little shy,” she said. Then she looked over at Dalton. “Isn’t that right, Dalton?”
Dalton just buried his head into the breast of Dorothy’s coat.
“Can you show me what you did on the swings?” she asked him in a low, quiet voice. She asked him, “What if I go over to the swings with you?” Slowly, reluctantly, Dalton withdrew from his place in Dorothy’s lapel, then took her by the hand over to the large swing set. He sat in one of the drooping rubber seats before pushing off the ground, then began to move his body gracefully through the chilly morning air.
But back on the bench where he observed it all very closely, Brian Eno fell silent, overcome somehow by a sense of astonishment.
“Astonishment,” he said the word aloud. No, that wasn’t it—he felt a sense of satisfaction, of gratitude even, at having seen this moment borne out of its genesis. At that very moment a jogger passed right by Brian Eno, who thought it might be a good idea to go over there and follow him. Brian Eno moved from the bench and began to walk tightly behind the jogger, but fell back when he got distracted by a small group of ducks near the pond. They were walking around a structure, it appeared, which Brian Eno also saw there. As Brian Eno approached the ducks, they quacked. To him it conformed to a syntax. “I’m Brian Eno,” Brian Eno told them. He took a knee in the grass to get a better look. “Together with Phil Collins, John Cale, and Robert Fripp, I produced my third studio album Another Green World, which marked a meaningful departure from my previous music, and which would go on to become a critical step in the development of ‘ambient music’ as a genre more fully.” The ducks quacked at that. Some of the ducks quacked at Brian Eno, some quacked at one another, and still others simply quacked, at nothing or at everything, though even these ducks stood very near Brian Eno. As he watched them there in their reverie, suddenly Brian Eno darted bolt upright, as if alarmed by something which lay just beneath the surface.
“Astonishment,” he said again to himself. He reached for a small digital recording device, which he kept in his pocket with his keys, and he brought it out into the non-pocket world, the world of objects, where he held it at the ready. It was then that he started to record the ducks. As he did this the ducks seemed to gain an awareness of a kind, and the sound of their quacking developed quickly in turn: soon it had heightened into a screaming crescendo, a mournful blues into the recesses of the aether, and passersby and joggers alike slowed to a stop to peer off the green belt and into the grassy field. They expected to find that something unfit for consciousness had occurred. Instead they found themselves looking at Brian Eno. And noticing their gaze after a moment’s passing, Brian Eno felt an uncontrollable rush rise within him, then addressed his new audience with a calm word of goodwill:
“I’m Brian Eno,” he called out over the ducks. He kept on recording. “I created the album Music for Films, a selection of songs which I wrote as the soundtrack to imaginary films. However,” he bellowed, “six of these songs did eventually appear in extant, very real film productions throughout the late nineteen-seventies and early nineteen-eighties—an interplay, as it were, of historical forces among themselves, and a decisive step, it may certainly be said, in the progression of the larger Notion of ‘ambient music’ as a whole.” As the quacking of the ducks went on coursing through him, Brian Eno’s body began to tremble with the force of pure sound.
“Now,” he continued, “I am recording these ducks for my next album, Brian Eno. But do not be alarmed. This is something I do quite often. And I can assure you,” he concluded, “ladies and gentlemen, that Brian Eno will be my finest work to date.”
Brian Eno dropped the three sheets of paper to the conference room table. He stood from his chair and turned to look out the window of the skyscraper, paying no regard to the members of the agency gathered before him that day. Without a word Brian Eno leaned on the windowsill with both his arms, gazing into the subtle, moody gray of the overcast London sky. “Really?” was all he could bring himself to say. Brian Eno let his gaze drop suddenly to his feet. Years, decades, really, of being an industry leader—valuable time spent, which he would certainly not get back, honing his reputation as the harbinger of "ambient music"—and in spite of everything, this was where it had really culminated: standing in a conference room before a council of social media consultants.
“How confident,” Brian Eno spoke again, “do we feel about this campaign in particular?” “With all due respect, Brian Eno,” began a young man at the table named Davy. Davy had earned for himself a bachelors of business administration. “We have the data,” he said. “We are the market experts. And we’re quite sure about this.” Davy nodded his head. His boss Alyssa cleared her throat.
But Brian Eno just ignored them both:
“This is how we want to tell them?” was what he said instead. He spun on his heels before pointing to the three sheets of paper still on the table. “This is how we want to tell the world about Brian Eno, the penultimate installment in the realization of ‘ambient music?’” Brian Eno glared directly into the team of marketers as if into a dense spatial field. Beneath his backwards newsboy cap, a vein throbbed so furiously in his head it neared bursting.
Alyssa tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “It has good viral potential,” was what she said. Brian Eno sat down slowly in his chair again to address the team. He picked up an apple from which he had just been eating and bit clean into it, then produced a digital recording device from his pocket among his keys. He pressed the red record button on it then held it beside his mouth, and then he chewed the bite of the apple that he’d only just taken.
At the table, Davy noticed that Brian Eno had on a black turtleneck.
“Sure,” Brian Eno said. He swallowed the apple and he cut off the device. “I understand that there are certain games we must play. No victor, as it were, ever had the field in one shot, and certain spoils exist for no man’s taking. Mediums change over time, and every day, and it is the very eloquence of this almost transcendent fact which renders art itself immutable. There is a beauty in this, and I readily accept it. I pay you very handsomely,” he went on, “and generally find myself quite pleased with your work.”
Brian Eno stopped speaking for a moment and took another bite of the apple. He continued:
“But I want to be certain,” he said, “absolutely certain, that there is not a single doubt among you—that this decision, above all, was one you arrived at unanimously.” The room fell silent after that except for the sound of a pen scribbling quickly upon a notepad. Davy, it seemed, had suddenly formulated a plan.
“Brian Eno,” he declared, “and Alyssa—if I may—I have an idea.” Everyone seated at the table that day turned toward Davy, including Brian Eno, who pressed “record” on his device and put it in the center of the table.
“Please,” Brian Eno whispered, “do tell.”
Davy finished writing. He looked over his notes. And then, with not even a moment’s rest, began to explain himself quickly:
“I know we’re coming up on time,” was what he said, “but I suggest a more localized approach. TikTok sensation in the metro areas, sure—but where does that leave us for the average consumer?” Davy shuffled through his notes. “I say we push the campaign through all traditional television channels, and run a secondary advertising budget large enough to purchase our own radio frequency. We call it: Brian Eno in the Air.” Davy waved his hands around. “It will effectively integrate ‘ambient music’ into the physical makeup of all existence itself.” “What the fuck,” Brian Eno shouted. Brian Eno threw the five sheets of paper onto the grass beside his lawn chair, then glanced breathlessly at the ceramic flamingos and dolphins set all about him.
“Sebastian,” Brian Eno said. But Sebastian was nowhere to be found.
Brian Eno picked up the papers and took them with his empty glass to his patio bar, where Brian Eno’s ForeverAndEverNoMore was streaming on the Sonos. Sebastian was walking toward him with a cocktail on a tray. It was a Sidecar.
“Where did you find this rubbish,” Brian Eno snarled angrily. He threw the papers at Sebastian and took the drink from the tray, which he then replaced with the empty glass in his hand. Brian Eno took a sip.
“Another Sidecar, sir,” Sebastian just said.
“It is not proper service,” Brian Eno wiped his mouth, “to use the word, ‘another.’ We’ve discussed this.”
Sebastian bent down to pick the papers off the ground. “It was on the internet, Brian Eno,” he said about the story. “It was on one of those atrocious, ill-advised web logs. Do you know how I mean?” Brian Eno scoffed. Astonishment, he recalled the word silently. Of course Brian Eno knew what a "web log" was—“Brian Eno” had been mentioned in over one hundred thousand of them. He licked the granulated sugar from the rim of his cocktail glass, and then he glared down at Sebastian, an uncontrollable rush rising within him.
-- Lake Markham is a writer and photographer who lives and works in Chicago, IL. With a background rooted in the intersection of art and philosophy, his work focuses on postmodern alienation, the relationship between creator and created, and the hermeneutic continuity of existence. Lake often writes about chili. His work has been published by Zero Readers, JAKE Magazine, and The Philosopher’s Meme, among others. He is currently at work on a collection of short stories, as well as a forthcoming novel, Lo Siento.