I’ve mentioned before and want to reiterate my delight at discovering a thriving and youthful Brian Eno fandom online. Surprisingly to me, I’ve found that I’m not the only one hooked on his eccentric genius. Nothing aggravates me more that the casual dismissal of Eno’s music as ‘elitist’. The fact that anything remotely intellectual and outside the deepest mainstream is called ‘elitist’ is infuriating. As if not being able to appreciate the novel and challenging were somehow a point of pride. Just as bad are fans and followers who actually embrace that label and start to think of themselves as being part of some kind of ‘elite’ just because they bought a Brian Eno album. Those people are called ‘hipsters’. I wish they would die. Eno’s music is outsider music, designed not to sell to the broadest audience (though he’s capable of that too) but to speak and connect with a small and devoted fanbase. That teenagers in Oklahoma are finding warmth and comfort in Taking Tiger Mountain doesn’t make them an ‘elite,’ but it does showcase the remarkable and magic connection formed between an artist with a vision and individuals years and miles away who respond to that vision. And yes, I do think I’m Brian Eno’s intended audience, in that his music does require a mindset specific and different and inaccessible to large swatches of Top 40 fansj, and maybe after all, that does make me better than everyone.
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