This morning I dreamt I was in Brian Eno’s house. And Brian Eno had a really cool house. It was really big and modern, with high ceilings and wallpaper*-modern interior decorating.

Eno himself was a really nice guy. He didn’t seem studious or detached like you might expect (see: another Eno dream), but down-to-earth and warm.

He had this study area, littered with books and things, which he let me explore at will. I remember finding this little art/craft piece made of red construction paper, with other pieces of construction paper glued to it. Eno had folded it real clever, so that these long brown pieces which were supposed to look like wheat stalks (and, of course, did) stuck through a small opening that was supposed to symbolize the surface of the earth.

fig 7: a modernist house, like brian eno's

He had some other books that looked kind of like my discreet math book from college, which I guess makes some sense. I suppose it also made sense that Eno had a study, and not a studio.

Eno then took me up to this diner he’d had built on one of the top floors of the house. On our way we passed through a series of small interlocking rooms, put together like some weird, futuristic spacecraft maintenance tunnel, or something weird and futuristic like that.

The diner itself was really cool. It was all beige and metallic, also looked like something out of wallpaper*, but, as Brian Eno explained to me, was actually modeled after an old-school diner he’d frequented in his youth. He told me this really funny story about that diner, but I can’t remember what it was about, just him laughing.

fig 8: a diner, like brian eno's, but less modern

There were other people at this diner, some of whom looked like families on vacation. It was as if Brian Eno’s home had become some sort of tourist destination, like Graceland or something, which I seriously doubt is the case. I wanted to ask Brian Eno who these people were (there must by a perfectly logical explanation, right?), but he just kept on telling stories. I remember looking him square in the face, and his face being blurry, like a heat mirage.

This whole time the first track off Music for Airports is playing. This struck me as slightly vain, but understandable. After all, as Brian Eno explained in the liner notes to his ambient albums, and in interviews, he created this music to serve as a kind of aural wallpaper, so of course he’d be decorating his own home with it.

After a while I realized the music wasn’t coming from my dream at all, that my housemate had woken up and was playing it while he made breakfast. So Brian Eno’s not so vain, after all.