And today in our ongoing quest to encourage artists to live like bums and just make stuff we bring you this: a clip of Brian Eno explaining why he always dissuades creatives from getting a job.
Check out this video of Brian Eno explaining why he always dissuades artists from getting a job and about his creative utopia.
The video isn’t as apathetic as it first seems. He isn’t saying “don’t do anything”. Quite the contrary actually. What he tries to explain is that the genius is often irrevocably entwined with collaboration and that many of the world’s most celebrated creatives – “Picasso, Rembrandt, Shostakovich, whatever” – lived and drew from an active and flourishing cultural scene, and that “work” is the antithesis to creative collaboration.
“I often get asked to come and talk at art schools,” he says “and I rarely get asked back, because the first thing I always say is, ‘I’m here to persuade you not to have a job.'”
As Open Culture note, this is easier said than done, of course. People need to work to live. And to get around this conundrum, Eno suggests working towards “a future where everybody is in a position” to not have to work, with some form of universal basic income being the norm.
“In terms of basic income, I probably know less than anybody else on the subject than anybody else here,” he concedes. “But what I do know is that the concept is the closest thing that I’ve heard to achieving the kind of future that I’d like to live in.”
It’s all very utopian (and completely naive) but an interesting concept to consider nonetheless. Check it out.
[via Open Culture].
