Quiet
by John Potter
January 2024
by John Potter
January 2024
This is one of four playlists that emerged from an experiment where four academic authors documented and then reflected upon the ways that music shaped their writing spaces. They did this while separately working on book chapters for the edited collection, Postdigital Learning Spaces: Towards Convivial, Equitable and Sustainable Spaces of Learning. Elsewhere on this site you will find the playlists compiled by David Overend, Genaro Oliveira and James Lamb, the other authors involved in this project. The playlists are each presented alongside a reflective commentary, like the one below, that were written as part of the experiment. A fuller account of the exercise is offered within the Postdigital Learning Spaces book which is due to be published by Springer during summer 2024.
Perhaps I am really answering a slightly different question, namely: ‘What role does music play in shaping my writing space?’ This is because I have always listened to music while I write and I don’t think I could do it without music. It did take some time to work out what the best music is for the purpose. It turns out, for me, to be music which creates an atmosphere of calm and focus. It can’t have lyrics. I am much too attached to songs with words and will end up listening to the song rather than allowing it to set up the space for working in. Songs are for different kinds of listening.
My earliest and most regular choices revolved around the music of Brian Eno. I doubt that I am alone in this. The premise behind his Ambient Music was to use his compositions to create an atmosphere or tint, for it to become part of an environment and allow it to develop into a space for thinking. It was never intended to be easy listening instrumental music and much of what is now labelled ‘Ambient’ music seems very distantly related to the original vision. Eno wrote about it as follows:
‘Whereas conventional background music is produced by stripping away all sense of doubt and uncertainty (and thus all genuine interest) from the music, Ambient Music retains these qualities. And whereas the intention is to ‘brighten’ the environment by adding stimulus to it (thus supposedly alleviating the tedium of routine tasks and levelling out the natural ups and downs of the body rhythms), Ambient Music is intended to induce calm and a space to think….Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting.’
(Eno, 2020 :297)
The way the music adds a different quality to the space is important to me which is one reason why I don’t usually listen to it through headphones or earbuds. Those occasions when I do would be when the environment is too loaded with other sounds or my music might intrude on other people’s space. Typically this would be when writing in a public space and/or on a train.
The music I listened to for this chapter had a base layer of Eno in the mix but also additional pieces produced in the same vein. This is music I’ve collected through the years and have added to a playlist on streaming services called ‘Quiet’. Artists like Stars of the Lid, Anthène, Mary Lattimore and others have joined the list. I have expanded to include artists who work with found sounds in their pieces, such as KMRU and Halftribe. I shuffle the list and continually add to it but the old favourites surface regularly. ‘Dunwich Beach , Autumn, 1960’ from 1982’s Eno album ‘On Land’ has just emerged as I type.
The one thing that they all have in common is that they signal that it is time to think and to write and that the space, wherever I am, is ready for this activity.
Eno, B. (2020). A Year with Swollen Appendices: Brian Eno’s Diary 25th Anniversary Edition. Faber and Faber.
John Potter is a Professor of Media in Education at University College London, where he researches and teaches around media in education, digital cultures and literacies.
Perhaps I am really answering a slightly different question, namely: ‘What role does music play in shaping my writing space?’ This is because I have always listened to music while I write and I don’t think I could do it without music. It did take some time to work out what the best music is for the purpose. It turns out, for me, to be music which creates an atmosphere of calm and focus. It can’t have lyrics. I am much too attached to songs with words and will end up listening to the song rather than allowing it to set up the space for working in. Songs are for different kinds of listening.
My earliest and most regular choices revolved around the music of Brian Eno. I doubt that I am alone in this. The premise behind his Ambient Music was to use his compositions to create an atmosphere or tint, for it to become part of an environment and allow it to develop into a space for thinking. It was never intended to be easy listening instrumental music and much of what is now labelled ‘Ambient’ music seems very distantly related to the original vision. Eno wrote about it as follows:
‘Whereas conventional background music is produced by stripping away all sense of doubt and uncertainty (and thus all genuine interest) from the music, Ambient Music retains these qualities. And whereas the intention is to ‘brighten’ the environment by adding stimulus to it (thus supposedly alleviating the tedium of routine tasks and levelling out the natural ups and downs of the body rhythms), Ambient Music is intended to induce calm and a space to think….Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting.’
(Eno, 2020 :297)
The way the music adds a different quality to the space is important to me which is one reason why I don’t usually listen to it through headphones or earbuds. Those occasions when I do would be when the environment is too loaded with other sounds or my music might intrude on other people’s space. Typically this would be when writing in a public space and/or on a train.
The music I listened to for this chapter had a base layer of Eno in the mix but also additional pieces produced in the same vein. This is music I’ve collected through the years and have added to a playlist on streaming services called ‘Quiet’. Artists like Stars of the Lid, Anthène, Mary Lattimore and others have joined the list. I have expanded to include artists who work with found sounds in their pieces, such as KMRU and Halftribe. I shuffle the list and continually add to it but the old favourites surface regularly. ‘Dunwich Beach , Autumn, 1960’ from 1982’s Eno album ‘On Land’ has just emerged as I type.
The one thing that they all have in common is that they signal that it is time to think and to write and that the space, wherever I am, is ready for this activity.
Eno, B. (2020). A Year with Swollen Appendices: Brian Eno’s Diary 25th Anniversary Edition. Faber and Faber.
John Potter is a Professor of Media in Education at University College London, where he researches and teaches around media in education, digital cultures and literacies.
