Brian Eno and Jon Hassell in Sydney
Brian Eno is in Sydney curating Luminous. A festival of music, light, ideas and performance. Having decided to stay home for the winter, instead of a Europe adventure, I have treated myself to a number of events for the festival.
Jon Hassel and Maarifa Street was the first. Totally sublime………..
Here is the moon being dwarfed by Eno’s ever changing projections on The Opera House.
Here is a link to the web cam of the Opera House http://luminous.sydneyoperahouse.com/sails.aspx
Eno’s ’77 million paintings’ an installation with sound and slowly evolving images is gorgeous and one could happily inhabit it for days and come out the other end significantly closer to resolve.
Last night was a “conversation” between Brian Eno and Jon Hassell. Which was funny, intelligent, inspiring, affirming and hmmmmmmmmmm slightly disturbing in terms of the usual questionable white male gender and indigenous politics still being present ….even in these the most admired of my creative thinkers. Over all though wonderful to be present for it.
This was their starting point.
“We both come from an artistic frame of mind which assumes that art is in some sense practiced philosophy, that the decisions an artist makes aren’t separate from the world view that he holds and that art can be seen as a ‘working out’ of social/philosophical/cultural ideas. ” Eno 2009, Sydney Opera House
There is much I could say on this as it really is a very lived reality for me which is both wonderful and fraught with difficulty, as so many of these ‘creative’ decisions seem to be at odds with prudence. Prudence a word which i have been exploring the meaning of on a daily basis of late. I digress, I digress, I digress…. I could go on….. but i won’t for now ……….heading off to Canberra to engage in 2 creative collaborations with 2 old friends……more on that later… I am blessed!
Definition from Wikipedia
Prudence is the exercise of sound judgment in practical affairs. It is classically considered to be a virtue. Virtue is the ability to judge between virtuous and vicious actions, not only in a general sense, but with regard to appropriate actions at a given time and place. Although prudence itself does not perform any actions, and is concerned solely with knowledge, all virtues had to be regulated by it. Distinguishing when acts are courageous, as opposed to reckless or cowardly, for instance, is an act of prudence, and for this reason it is classified as a cardinal (pivotal) virtue.
In modern English, however, the word has become increasingly synonymous with cautiousness. In this sense, prudence names a reluctance to take risks, which remains a virtue with respect to unnecessary risks, but when unreasonably extended (i.e. over-cautiousness), can become the vice of cowardice.