Culture is everything you don’t have to do

Brian Eno once said these remarkable words:

Culture is everything you don’t have to do. You have to wear clothes. But you don’t have to wear these particular clothes. We could all just wear sacks actually, couldn’t we? You have to eat but you don’t have to develop complex and beautiful cuisines. So there is a layer of things which we have to do otherwise we would not survive and there is a huge layer on top of that which is stylistic, essentially.  And we spend a lot of our time thinking about that stylistic layer…

And a few brief moments later he added:

The best thing about art is that it is not life. It does not hurt you. You can switch it off or walk away from it. But you can surrender to it as well.

If only this were true. Or is it?

Life is like a dancing Santa Claus

I first heard of Brain Eno about ten years ago. An old painter mystic friend of mine, with whom I had developed a habit of discussing over a glass of beer the meaning of life and other spiritual matters, once gave me Eno’s 1978 record “Music for Airports”.