Windex

The emotional scope of the song "And Then So Clear" by Brian Eno was like spiritual calibration for me. I listened to it on loop one morning at work and almost quit my job – that’s how much it made me crave change and filled me with confidence in life. It was given to me by the most eccentric person I know; It played this summer while I made a new friend and was still playing when I lost that friend; It’s about change, and fear of change, and razor mountains, and rain smearing across the sky like a massive windshield like you’ve got a god’s eye perspective and the earth is your SUV.

This was year I got an mp3 player and rediscovered my forgotten love of public solitude – the intimacy of daydreaming with headphones on and watching the world go by. I had forgotten how important all those little details are that get blurred by road-sounds when you listen to music on car speakers. This was also the same time I was first discovering Eno, having much of his back catalog donated to me by a friend. It was a perfect way to get into Eno’s music. Quietly, privately, attentively. I came to see him as the true father of modernity in music.

I immediately preferred the ambient stuff, particularly with Robert Fripp, to his glammy song-based material. So I was surprised this spring at how much I loved his new, song-based release Another Day On Earth (it cracks me up how all his album titles manage to sound the same. It’s kind of like Zombie films: Day of the Dead, Night of the Dead, Day of the Night of the Dead of the Living Dead, and on and on) from which this song is taken. I’m not sure why, after all these years, he decided to start writing songs again, but I’m glad he did.

Windex your windshield:

And Then So Clear