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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Lifestyle
James McMahon

Brian Eno: ‘Sex, drugs, art… they’re all ways of surrendering’

‘I exist on a tightrope between pessimism and optimism’: Brian Eno.
‘I exist on a tightrope between pessimism and optimism’: Brian Eno. Photograph: Cecily Eno

The first things that ever excited me were music and light. I was very young. I remember once being at my uncle’s when he projected a Disney film on to the kitchen wall. It was intensely bright and it stayed in my mind for years as a sort of magical moment. It was the same with music. When I first heard Get a Job by the Silhouettes, from 1957, it was the weirdest feeling. It made me feel funny inside.

I always thought I’d be an artist. My uncle was a watercolour painter, and I just loved the idea you could bring something into existence that had never existed before, something new that nobody had ever seen or thought of. I still feel like that. Every time I walk into my studio I get butterflies thinking what might happen.

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