driving me backwards

PETER: This might be a very male point of view, but I have the idea that, even though friendship is often defined as a leisure activity, it’s really about alliance — people who believe in the same things and therefore want to talk to each other.
BRIAN: I think that’s a very good definition. But it actually seems like quite a female idea of friendship.
PETER: How so?
BRIAN: When I watch my two little girls play, the thing that interests me about their games is the very laborious sets of relationships they’ll construct between the characters. You know, “You’re the auntie, but the mother doesn’t like you because you did this.” It’s terribly complicated, and there’s never any game at the end of it. The building of the network of relationships is just about all that ever happens.
PETER: That’s said to be a skill that’s prominent in women.
BRIAN: Yes. It led me to my theory that cities are places built for women.
PETER: Wow.
BRIAN: In cities, you have the opportunity to do all the things that women are really specialized at: intense social relationships and interactions, attention to lots of simultaneous details. And of course in cities you can do very few of the things that men are good at.
PETER: Like what?
BRIAN: You can’t break anything in a city. Everything is valuable, so you’re limited in how much you can test the physical nature of things — which I think is a big part of a man’s make up.
PETER: Many urbanists say that public life in the eighteenth century — which is when the modern city began to take shape — was available only to men. Do you think a female city was always there under the surface?
BRIAN: I do. One of the peaks of civilization in the west was the salon. They were nearly always the invention and ongoing project of women.
--Brian Eno with Peter Halley, Index Magazine, 2002

I don't know about gender "make up," but in terms of how men and women sometimes behave, er, hm okay? What to do about these gender generalizations? He might be on to something. It's interesting. Eno is a brilliant musician, producer and visual artist. His newest project, which I learned about via Very Short List, is a DVD called 77 Million Paintings. It turns your computer screen into a slowly-transforming art work of hand-painted images, which are accompanied by a dreamy soundscape. I'm excited about this. Reminds me of Brakhage bits, minus the possibility of epileptic shock.