Eno on Miles Davis
Back in 2002, I stuffed some email text into my famous Funky Knowledgebase—the more technical portions of which is online at SonghaySystem.com. Now that we have this Blog entry (and the Internet) for the time being, I feel ‘free’ to dump my offline record for the online ones. So the original message (that will be deleted in few seconds), “Eno on Miles Davis,” is online in the commons.
I have had a few years to think about Eno on Miles Davis and with all due respect to Brian Eno my bullets:
- Almost ‘everyone’ thinks about Miles Davis in an “un-miles” like way—including Ken Burns—and Wynton Marsalis. The word ‘everyone’ actually refers to people who are not authentically cool people. Wynton is not cool. Wynton is paid, professional, charismatic and trained. But I trust Quincy Troupe’s handling of Mile Davis’ autobiography—Wynton is not cool.
- The Eno phrase “Miles was an intelligent man, by all accounts” is yet another indicator that the inspiration behind writing these words is not cool. At base, this remark is based on the fallacy of objectivity with respect to human intelligence… In outer limits, the rasx() context, this remark is of the habit of white person addressing only other white people. This is not cool. Sai Baba is cool. (Miles used heroin which is an artificial way to maintain his natural cool but this stuff is in his autobiography…)
- One may observe that Miles wore scarves to conceal a neck expanding like that of Dizzie Gillespie—and he bowed his head as he played as well. And then there was the pain associated with squeezing the breath of African life through European metal instruments used in military marching bands (the health affects of his recreational/drug life made this exceedingly painful). So Eno may wax philosophical as to why Miles used “context” more than his trumpet—and these remarks are not invalid (remember I saved Eno’s message for over four freakin’ years!)—but these practical ‘primitive’ observations are not sealed off from me.So Brian Eno talking about Mile Davis is like Eric Clapton talking about Jimi Hendrix—is like Alexander the Greek talking about the Egyptians of the Old Kingdom. I intuit from the speaker that there is a sense of safety that the subject of discussion is dead. In the speaker there appears to be a toxic mix of authentic admiration for a person that would consider the speaker a stranger and the “spirit” that sees wisdom in killing your father in order to mature and become a man.
Of course saying anything “bad” about Brian Eno riles the dialectic that surely lies in every Eno “fan.” All I can say in my defense is go to rasx.megafunk.com and click on “Blacktronic Bolongo” you may find a song called “M386SX Variation 0” which is inspired by a track from Brian Eno’s Music for Films. And, no, kid: Brian Eno is not my electronic-musical father and I do not want him killed so that I feel grown up. Miles Davis, Stevie Wonder and Herbie Hancock made electronic music from way back…