Just skimmed a wonderful (albet long) interview of Brian Eno. His music isn’t bad, but I had no idea the man was this deep of a thinker:
His thoughts on “image”:
For example, let’s take this pair of designer sunglasses that happen to be on the table in front of me. They’re very styled. They don’t have to be like that. Glasses don’t have to be funny, oval, weird-shaped looking glasses, space-age type glasses. As I put those glasses on, I’m not only keeping sun out of my eyes. I’m also engaging in some kind of game with myself and the rest of the world. What I’m doing is I’m entering into some kind of simulator. I’m saying, “what would it be like to be the kind of person that wears these kinds of glasses?” What I mean by that is, I’m not actually abandoning who I am and becoming somebody else; I’m for a while entering into a game where I suddenly become this person that’s a different person from the person you’ve just been talking to.
With all fashion, what we do is play at being somebody else. We play at inhabiting another kind of world. If I decide to cut my hair short and dress like a tank commander, I play with the resonances of kitsch, militaria, dominance, and surrender , and control, and strength and weakness and all those sorts of things — I’m role-playing effectively, when I’m making fashion choices.