Thought for the day

Brian Eno talking to Daniel Lanois about a film on the source of Beauty that Lanois wants to make.

One thing that would be really interesting for your film is for people to see how beautiful things grow out of shit, because nobody ever believes that. Everybody thinks that Beethoven had his String Quartets completely in his head, they somehow appeared there formed in his head, and all he had to do was write them down so that they would be manifest to the world. But I think what's so interesting and what would really be a lesson that everybody should learn, is that things come out of nothing, things evolve out of nothing. The tiniest seed in the right situation turns into the most beautiful forest, and then the most promising seed in the wrong situation turns into nothing. And I think that this would be important for people to understand, that this gives people confidence in their own lives to know that this is how things work.

If you walk around with the idea that there are some people who are so gifted that they have these wonderful things in their heads — but you're not one of them, you are just sort of a normal person, you could never do anything like that — then you live a different kind of life. But you could have another kind of life if you say "Well, I know that things come from nothing very much, start from unpromising beginnings, and I am an unpromising beginning, and I could start something too."