Yesterday we celebrated my birthday by going to see Eno, a film about producer Brian Eno who has worked with musicians and bands like David Bowie, U2, the Talking Heads, and Coldplay.
What’s fascinating about Eno is it’s generative, meaning a computer program call “Brain One” (an anagram of Brian Eno) creates a new version of the film every time it screens from over 500 hours of archival footage. There are 52 quintillion possible versions of the film that can be generated from this program.
Which got me to thinking how the understanding of who we are as a person is also generative. We have an extraordinary amount of “footage” in our brain from which to create a film of our own lives. We can move memories around and begin, as well as end, our film wherever we choose. We can make ourselves the hero and perhaps even the villain. We can be a character in a thriller, rom-com, or drama. The computer program of our brain has the ability to render the story of our lives however we choose.
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