This might seem to be a diary entry about meeting Brian Eno

But it's really about growing up in Orange Park, Florida in 1985. 

Backstage on the night of David Byrne’s first London show, everyone was being shuffled by a friendly-yet-menacing security guard towards a magic-markered sign at the end of the hallway. "Artist's Bar," it said. I was walking in between my boyfriend and Steve, who had just written a movie about the American South. Some old bald guy in a silky shirt was just in front of us. The bald guy and boyfriend were talking; I was chatting with Steve. I got a Stella out of the tub on the plywood bar and walked to the big table they'd snagged in the corner. As I sat down boyfriend yelled "Robin! This is Brian!"

"What's your name again?" I leaned over, shaking the bald man’s hand.

"Brian!" he yelled over the noise.

"Nice to meet you!" I cried.

Boyfriend stood up and started to walk away, stopping to catch my arm up and tug me out of my seat towards the door. We stopped and I bopped up and down. "Where're you going?" I hollered.

"That's Brian Eno," he replied.

"What?"

Brian Eno, holy cats.

"What?" I remember clutching at boyfriend’s hand as 20 of my 33 years curved around in a neat little circle right then and there, coming into place with a satisfying click.

This has nothing to do with being impressed by fame. After all, Brian Eno was hardly the toast of suburban Jacksonville in 1985. Huey Lewis and the News, on the other hand...

I read about Brian Eno more than I heard him -- I came at him through photography and Andy Warhol and The Jam, the Talking Heads and Joy Division. These were the people I looked at and listened to when I could find them, and they helped explain the situation to me. Orange Park was the situation.

When you think of Jacksonville, Florida in 1985 think of an extremely humid Gary, Indiana. Jacksonville in 1985 was comprised mainly of a huge uneducated, transient military population, a slightly smaller bunch of totally disenfranchised, segregated-by-default black people, and a tiny cluster of staunchly republican old-money types whose snobbery was as baseless as it was complete. Jacksonville in 1985 smelled like a paper mill, a sulfurous odor that still evokes a confusing nostalgia in me. Jacksonville in 1985 had a completely empty, boarded-up downtown and exactly two industries (well, 3 counting the paper mill): insurance and the military. The place has improved, but back then all I wanted was out.

As unfortunate a place as Jax in the 80s was to live, it at least had some compelling urban decay and one good nightclub. There was almost nothing interesting about Orange Park, the suburban town where I grew up. I attended Lakeside Middle School, but for the three years I was there the only body of water I saw was the ditch out by where the buses picked us up. This school was a sad collection of windowless yellow brick buildings clustered at the center of about 60 identical single-wide trailers, or "portables." No landscaping, no trees, just buildings thrown up in a sandspurred lot, broiling under the North Florida sun. If you went there you know I'm telling the truth. My high school had more than 3000 students, almost every one of them white.

Like the schools, the town was groaning under an exploding population. Trailer parks and pasteboard "garden apartments" sprang up overnight to house the families of the fathers stationed at NAS and Cecil Field. The older, more established residents lived on cul-de-sac-ed streets with long and misleading names -- "Hunter's Forest Glenn," "Dogwood Pointe Groves." The children of these families hung out at the Burger King in the middle of a vast sea of asphalt across from the high school, the bowling alley, or, of course, the brand-new mall. We met in cemeteries, vacant lots. The mothers shopped at K-Mart. Wal-Mart hadn't been invented yet.

Snarled on Blanding Boulevard and Kingsley with my mother, listening to "I'd Really Love to See You Tonight" or "Sarah Smile" on the radio, I felt hot and disoriented, afflicted with a perpetual rash. Everything was so flat, so blindingly bright, so new. And so, so ugly. I was exposed and frantic in this awful gritty place. I didn't hate the people, I was just suspicious of them. They seemed so inexplicably pleased. Didn't anyone notice that something was amiss? Was it just me?

Of course this is a generalization, of course there were people who thought about things and could sit for a while on a screened porch without having to make any noise. But the people I went to school with for the most part fell into one of 4 groups: football players (Jocks is too generous. Football, that's it.) and Christians. These two groups sometimes overlapped. And then the Future Farmers of America and the Heavy Metal fans (these two groups never did). As a pudgy agnostic with no interest in agriculture, the only group available to me was the last.

Some of these people were interesting. They had older brothers and sisters who had gone somewhere else once and brought some stuff back. Record albums. Suddenly here was someone saying out loud "This is not my beautiful house, dammit." Here's somebody saying: "Though we keep piling up the building blocks, the structure never seems to get any higher. Because we keep kicking out the foundations and stand useless while our lives fall down." Yep, that sounds about right.

And who can forget: If people were made to live in boxes | God would have given them string | To tie around themselves at bed time | Stop their dreams flying through the ceiling?

Can I get an amen? These people were talking sense. I'm not saying that all my adolescent angst came down to poor urban planning, but jeez, if your outsides reflect your insides then what are we to make of strip malls and Mattress Giants, the Playtime Drive-In and A Touch of Mink Trailer Court? No wonder I felt so irritated all the time. Whenever I thought about how I was trapped, how things would never change, how this was it and even if I'd never feel glad about it I'd have to at least learn to accept it somehow -- whenever I thought like this, I'd listen to these people. There were other people out there who were clearly paying attention. I might never find them, but if I held on maybe I could at least go where they went. Maybe there'd be some kind of different perspective in London, or New York. Or even in Manchester, for God's sake. I drew a mental map of these places and carried it around with me like a talisman.

But Brian Eno. I'd heard Here Come the Warm Jets once in a car at the beach, but had never actually seen any of his albums. Where in Orange Park in 1985 am I going to get a Brian Eno album? I'd read a lot about him, though. I thought about Brian Eno as more of a cultural entity than a musician. Not an icon, but a motivating thread that ran through everything I cared about. His name appeared over and over in liner notes and interviews; he turned up in pictures surrounded by people I admired. Books and magazine articles talked about him as a revolutionary force, and the people whose albums were available to me cited him as a kind of musical mother lode. He was a bridge between musical styles and means of expression, but something else also. I thought of him as a sort of Rosetta Stone, a musical Ur. Deeply weird and original, his name was invoked in hushed tones by the 4 punk rockers in Jacksonville.

I grabbed my boyfriend’s wrist, held on. "Oh my God." I said.

"Calm down, calm down." Boyfriend laughed and patted my arm.

"No, you don't understand," I said. "I really wish you hadn't told me that." I was reeling from 20 years of associations set off by one name. It's rare that you get a glimpse of the poles that hold up the tent of your life, the thread all your stories are strung on. The narrative arc, so to speak. Well, here it is. Thank God I was paying attention.

Am I going to go over there and demand that Brian Eno listen to me while I tell him all of this, everything I just thought of when my boyfriend said "That's Brian Eno"? Am I going to start babbling about deadmalls and parking lots and Jane Jacobs and Ian Curtis? It's possible.

As I walk back to the table I decide to just act like I have no idea what's going on. That should be easy. Steve is sitting next to Brian Eno and beaming like a baby. Steve is extremely easy to talk to. I'll talk to him. We start discussing the movie he did with my boyfriend. I start asking him questions. Then Brian Eno kind of leans over and says, "Where are you from?"

"I live in Atlanta."

"Oh, I've been to Atlanta," he says.

"You've been to Atlanta?"

"Well, not Atlanta. Clarkston. My older sister lived in Clarkston."

"Your older sister lived in Clarkston?" I realize that I am repeating everything he says back to him in a high-pitched, incredulous voice. I wonder if he notices.

"Yeah. She worked in a mill."

"She worked in a mill?" Oh well.

"Yeah. She married this other mill worker and they moved to Portland. Then he got transferred to Clarkston."

"Oh my God," I say.

"I'll tell you," he leans forward, "Clarkston is the worst place in the entire world. The worst place I've ever been."

Ha, amateur. I start thinking again about Orange Park. "I hate to tell you this, but there are a lot worse places than Clarkston. Clarkston's pretty nice, relatively speaking. There are some good things about Clarkston."

Clarkston is in the green Georgia mountains. It's cool there in the summer sometimes and there are fireflies. There's an old downtown with a drug store where you can get a hand-dipped vanilla milkshake.

"Like what?" he says. He seems genuinely curious.

"Well, there's a drug store there that has really good milkshakes." He laughs and then I laugh. "But I'm serious. Man, you think that's bad, you should go to some towns in Alabama, North Florida. There's just nothing there at all. Just like used auto parts stores, and methamphetamine labs, and a lot of ghost malls."

"Really?" he says, like he likes the thought of a ghost mall. So do I, actually. And then I am telling him all about growing up in Orange Park. He listens to me carefully.

"Hmmm," he says finally. "The people in Clarkston certainly seemed to lack any kind of foundation." He holds up his hands and makes foundation-type gestures.

"You mean like a cultural foundation?"

“No, I mean like a moral foundation. They seem to just all be scattered out there, floating around. Nothing to anchor them."

"Well, that's pretty much America," I say.

"No, I've lived in America, and that's not America."

"Where've you lived?"

"New York and LA."

Steve and I both start laughing and shaking our heads. "No, that's not America." He starts laughing too. It's fun to sit in the Artist's Bar and argue with Brian Eno about America!

"So you were visiting your sister?" I ask. "How long were you there?"

"Well, my sister died."

"Oh. She had cancer."

"Yes. I called her on the phone and she was very very sick. She didn't say so but it was clear what was about to happen. So I got on a plane and went to Clarkston."

"What happened?" I ask.

"I was two and a half hours too late. I missed her by two and a half hours." Brian Eno sighs and looks down at his hands. He sits there like that for a long time, looking at his hands. Without thinking I reach out and squeeze two of his fingers, holding on.

"Oh my God, man, I am just so sorry. That is just awful."

"Yes it is, but I've gotten over it by now."

"No you haven't! How could you have?" I shake his hand back and forth. "That's just one of the worst things I've ever heard ever."

Brian Eno looks at me and his eyes well up. "Yes it is."

I let go of his hand. "Well," I say after a pause, "I really think it's time to take a picture of you all."

"OK!" cries Steve, sitting up straighter.

"How should you look?" I ask.

They consider. "Um, we should look handsome!" offers Steve.

"OK," I agree. "What does that mean? How do you look handsome?" They look at each other blankly for a while, then look back at me. "OK, here," I say, "Go like this." I tilt my head to the side and suck in my cheeks. Give them what I hope is a long simmering look. I hold up my camera and take the shot. Steve just sits there smiling like a big bear, but to my amazement Brian Eno follows my instructions exactly. This is one of the nicest people I've ever met, I decide.

I show them the picture. "Oh God!" Brian Eno gasps. "My head! It's just...just...so small or something. Why is my head so small? No, you must take another picture where my head is bigger."

So I hold the camera up really close to his face. He grins maniacally and I take the shot. I look at it and can't help bursting into laughter. He looks like a much hipper version of Grandy, my grandfather.

"Brian," I say, "You should've stuck with the small-headed one." I show him the picture.

"Ha! Brilliant!" he crows. We laugh and pass the camera around to the crowd that's joined us at the table.

"So," I say after I get my camera back, "What you been doing to keep yourself busy lately, Brian?" The woman sitting next to him barks out a laugh and the rest of the table falls absolutely silent.

"Well, today I planted 28 trees."

"Twenty-eight trees, good lord! So you're a gardener?"

"Yes, I love to garden."

"Me too! But 28 trees...was this some kind of volunteer project or something?"

He laughs. "Well, I guess you can say that no one paid me to plant these trees."

"Where'd you plant them?"

He reaches into a large black back he's carrying and pulls out a thick brochure. It's a very expensive, well-made brochure, the kind you get when you tour Versailles, or Liberace's house. There is a picture of a huge estate on the front, a vast green lawn. I flip through the booklet, looking at pictures of ornately decorated rooms. Period furniture, heavy beams, fireplaces I could park my car in. "So, are you like involved with some kind of restoration program? You're helping to restore this house?"

"This is my house," he says. No one at the table is saying a word. Everyone's watching me flip through the brochure.

"I see," I say. I look up at him after a few more pages. "So let me just clarify something, here. This is your house and you are actually BRIAN ENO."

"Yes," he answers gravely.

"Ha!" I yelp. I hand the brochure back to him. "Well, that explains it."

"That explains it!" laughs the girl sitting to my right.

"Brian," I ask, "How in God's name do you keep this place clean?"

Brian Eno laughs. "Oh, I just let the dirt settle, Robin. I never mind the dirt!"

"Is this your first house?"

"Well, no. I have a house in Wales and also one in New York. And I bought my parents a very nice house."

"Brian Eno, can I ask you a question?"

"Sure!" he says.

"What do your parents think of you? I mean, I think when my name comes up, my mother probably throws up her hands and says 'That Robin!'"

"Hmmm," says Brian Eno. "My mother is still after me to join the postal service."

"The postal service!"

"Yes," he says. "She says 'Now there's a job with some stability. And a good retirement.'"

"But you bought her this huge-ass house!" I say.

"I know!" he says. "She says 'Brian, you wouldn't have to be out in the weather! You could stay inside. You could get something involving a desk.'"

"A desk!" I say.

"A desk!" he says. 

We shake our heads, concerned about our confused mothers.

Good lord. All those years ago, sitting in my bedroom watching a record album go round and round. And maybe I'd never find these people, but maybe if I held on I could at least go where they went. Thank God I held on. Thank God I was paying attention.