“Randomness for me is just a tool.”

Brian Eno spoke these words, buried in the midst of an extensive and wonderful conversation between him and Rick Rubin on the Broken Record podcast. As someone who enjoys being creative - I like to design, paint, write, etc. - these words are startling and confronting and inspiring. How can randomness assist creativity? Isn’t control more important - finding exactly the right combination of elements, forms, colors, or words?

In this interview, Rick Rubin asked Brian Eno to talk extensively about randomness in his work. While he was talking about music, I think it applies to art, just as much - or any creative pursuit you can think of… Eno started out as a painter before switching gears.

“I like things where there is a layer of surprise, I suppose.” Eno said. “For me, its a way of searching a musical space that I wouldn’t do if I was just using my taste…One’s taste seems to propel you into the same areas over and over again….The interesting thing about randomness is that you’re taken in a direction you didn’t expect to go, and sometimes that turns out to be a really interesting place….So, randomness is really just a tool, a way of taking me somewhere different…Something happens, and you recognize it and you say, yes, that makes sense.”

This is so interesting to me because in my art-making, I have most enjoyed making the paintings that have most surprised me, where I have had less of a clear idea what the outcome would look like. My most recent painting called ‘mix up’ is an example. You can find it on Instagram (paulrosenblatt). I realize now that sometimes using a projector hooked up to my laptop as I do, projecting photos of a physical model that I built onto the canvas - in the dark basically - and then turning the lights on and working from there selectively painting what is projected and then repeating this process has created a form of randomness and taken some control away from me leading to new territories.

Eno went on to talk about the importance to him of giving up control by using strategies that take him somewhere unfamiliar:

“The thing that makes any work of art interesting…is the feeling that somebody was living it….The way you get into that state is by being in unfamiliar territory. You’re most alive when you’re not quite sure what is going on….That’s why we like improvisation so much, because people are deliberately putting themselves at risk.”

I’ve listened to this interview twice now...I love it.