Interview with Bette A. of “Slow Stories”

Slow Stories is a unique collaboration between Brian Eno and Bette A. It’s a book, a vinyl record (of Bette A.’s stories to Brian Eno’s music), and a signed, hand-painted artwork—all in one. There are only 444 copies available and all artist proceeds go to The Heroines! Movement (Bette’s global women’s storytelling initiative) and Earth Percent (Brian’s climate charity). Bette A. was kind enough to chat with us about the project, the nature of art, where her stories come from, and even some other things.

So, I know this project follows your 2024 book, What Art Does, but how did you end up in this collaboration and doing Slow Stories?

Well, Brian and I met at a dinner. We were seated next to each other and we were the only artists. And we were talking about art and we realized that we had one thing in common, which is we very strongly feel that artists need to speak more clearly about why we do art and why it's important to educate people about what art is and what it does. And it turned out that Brian had been thinking about this for 40 years. I had been thinking about it a little bit and when I started teaching art it became an important question to me, as well. If you teach something you need to know what it is and what it is for. Otherwise, it's pretty hard to give advice.

We started talking about this and at some point Brian said, well, why don't we record these conversations, because I've always wanted to write a book about this and maybe you can help me. So, we started recording our conversations and slowly this book developed. I started making doodles, just to clarify things to myself, and Brian said, oh, I love those, let's put them in the book. (What Art Does)

And meanwhile, we would spend time at the studio, talking about art but we would also do art. I would help him with his lyrics. I took up painting t-shirts and he painted t-shirts with me. Very naturally, you know. And then I told him, on one of those t-shirt painting days, my publisher thinks it might be a good idea to record one of my stories to music. And he said, well, let's do it! And 10 minutes later, we were in his studio and I was looking up my stories and deciding which one should I read while he was installing a microphone in front of my face. So, the pressure was on, but I didn't have enough time to think about it or get nervous. So that was good.

Oh, that's cool. So, the stories, let's transition to that, where do the stories come from? I guess writers are always getting asked this, but where do your stories come from? How do you explain that?

I've always been making stories in my head ever since I was a child. It was my way of making sense of the world. So if I had a problem with a classmate, at night in bed when I was worrying about it, I would turn it into a story in my head. I would turn us into squirrels or bears and I would just play out the story in my mind and come up with various endings and kind of feel through them and feel through the perceptions and the perspectives of the different characters, in a child way. And that helped me in daily life. I didn't see it back then as writing. That was just my way of finding my way forward in complicated situations. And at some point, I started enjoying writing them down. I started enjoying making people smile a little bit or think a little bit. I started sharing my stories. So still, my stories come from the questions that are on my mind, and then I explore them hoping to get a little bit closer to some kind of answer.

When you're writing something, are you thinking, this is just for me, or are you thinking you have a specific project in mind for it?

The wonderful thing about these short stories is that I thought they would never be published. I wrote them just for me. And I think that's why they might be the best thing that I wrote, because I didn't have any kind of audience in my mind. I had no desire to hide things that I found embarrassing, or to try to be smarter than I am. It's a very sincere expression of myself, which panned out good, I think.

And when you think about these stories, how would you describe their genre?

Well, it's hard. Some of them are in fable territory, some of them I would say, fairy tale, although they're not really… And then we have science fiction. I think they're all in the area of not quite real. Some magical or scientific happening, some unrealism of the magical or scientific kind.

So, I was talking to somebody the other day about poetry, and I was saying, in some ways, poetry is not that popular. And then he said, actually poetry is really popular. Think about it, children's books are basically mostly poetry, and lots of people actually have poems memorized, they just don't see themselves as people who appreciate poetry. So, I guess I would ask you the same thing about art. Is art popular and/or valued? Is it not? Or is it popular and valued, but people don't realize it? What are your thoughts on that?

It's exactly like your poetry example. It's popular, but it's not really recognized or valued that it's there. We do all do art all the time. And art history and art philosophy, an area of art which you might call high art, or intellectual art, or highbrow, has been fenced off. Then some people said, that's art, and the rest is just creative stuff.

In my view, anything you do that you don't have to do, that has some level of freedom in it, where there is not a function or purpose to it, such as setting the table in a nice way, that’s art. You know, you need the table, you need the plates, but you don't have to set them in a really nice way. All those things are art. And if you widen the definition that way you see that everyone is doing it. Everyone is enjoying it. It's incredibly important to us and we keep doing it in the most difficult conditions. And actually sometimes we start doing it more in the most difficult conditions. And it's wildly popular.

Back to the earlier book you did with Brian Eno, What Art Does, obviously there's a whole book, but do you have a short version of what you would say art does?

I think the most accurate statement is “Art changes how we feel about our feelings.” So, art is a way to make feelings happen. And we do it because we want to investigate or explore a feeling. In our opinion, art is really in the territory of feelings, even though it can also be intellectual or rational. It is our tool to explore feelings and make feelings happen. So that would be a very short version of an already quite short book.

You mentioned that you're teaching writing. What are some of the things that you emphasize to students in terms of art and storytelling, that kind of thing?

That's a good question. First of all, any kind of thing that I feel is holding a student back, I try to remove it. I try to investigate with them if they have any ideas of what they should be doing, if they have insecurities or preconceived notions about art, because that will slow you down massively or get you on the wrong path. I find that important. And then when they make a specific project, I try to get close to what are you doing here? What is it that you are doing? Are you making this for yourself or are you making this for people to have an experience? If so, have you invited them in? How do you want to invite them in? Are those things that you want to do actually happening? So, that's kind of what I do. I don't really teach a method or a school of thinking. I do a lot of undoing basically. Because I guess that's what I found useful in art school. And I think that that's something that art education accidentally puts on people, certain expectations of your own work that need to be undone. And then it's just skill and craft and skill and craft and skill and craft. And then commas or no commas, which I also enjoy. But I don't try to put my taste on anything or my idea of what things should be at all. It's quite hard.

Back to this project, there’s the recording and then there’s art and then there’s the book and I know some proceeds are going to the Heroines! Movement you’re part of. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

Yes, for sure. The Heroines! Movement I co-founded with Anne Vaxelair and Rod De Weese. It's a storytelling project across the world where local teams make books and story projects about women role models from their country and they're usually aimed at children or teenagers. The idea is that role models really help us to shape our ambition, our self-confidence, our dreams. And women are less represented in school materials as role models, so we tried to add a little something to that.

The Nepal team just published a book that went to 800 schools across the country. In the Netherlands, we made a book which came out in primary schools. We're making a book in Afghanistan. A woman in Afghanistan is secretly making one, anonymously. And in Italy, Slovenia, a whole bunch of other places, people are working on this. And it's wonderful and it's so much fun. I think it's a good thing.

That sounds cool. Who were some of your heroines then?

I get that question a lot. Well, Pippi Longstocking, for sure. She's fictional, but she was definitely a heroine for me, living with her horse and her monkey and no parents, and making up her own type of mathematics. It's very appealing. Later it became Ursula K. Le Guin. For a long time, she has been a big role model, or heroine, for me. She's so, so good at walking that path between creating stories that have a social value and investigate intellectual questions and political questions, without at all being prescriptive or didactic. She's a big role model of mine. And then many of the women I work with in the Heroines! Movement in their countries have become my role models, because they're often in a much harder position than I am and the way they persist and push on gives me a lot of daily inspiration with my tiny problems that I have.

So, what was it like working with Brian? You know, it sounds like you guys have kind of been doing things together for a while. I'm sure people ask you this all the time.

Yes, well, he is very encouraging. I've learned a lot from him. He encourages me to do whatever I feel like doing. Brian has no issue with just trying things and that was really inspiring. He has no expectations of his own art. He doesn't feel like he should stick to any kind of genre. If tomorrow he wants to design tea towels, he will do it. And he doesn't care what people think and that's been really inspiring. In the studio, he's very fast. He sees very quickly what works and what doesn't. He's always very nice and he says everything is great, but then he also throws stuff away when you're not looking.

For this specific record, I was a little bit nervous, because now we were really out of my territory and into his. And I wasn't sure if my voice would be suitable for it, because I have a Dutch accent. I started becoming a bit nervous and I said, shouldn't we get a professional voice for it? And he said, no, you sound like a human. I like that. We can make all kinds of perfection with AI, but you sound like an actual person. And there is some melody in your accent, some unusual way of approaching the language, which is enjoyable. And that was it for him. He doesn't need things to be sleek and perfect. Which is a relief, actually.

And then what do you have, coming up, either independent of him or with him again? Do you have another thing you're working on right now?

Yes, I'm working on essays. I'm working on a new screenplay. I just finished a screenplay of my second novel with the director. And lots of projects for the Heroines! Movement. And Brian and I are always working on things. Some of them may become something. Some of them might just end up being our own tea towel collection, you know?

That sounds good, too.

Any thoughts on AI and art? What are your thoughts on possibilities for that, fears, all those kinds of things?

 Good question. My fear is that it's owned by people who are pure capitalists and who are in it for the profit. First of all, that information will be inaccessible for people who don't have a subscription to the high-tier AI, because these companies have made sure that copyright laws have tightened, while they stole information and books and art. There's going to be an issue with who gets access to quality information. And that is very scary to me, especially working with, for instance, women in Afghanistan, who depend on online resources to get to books and to stories and who don't have a bank account very often. That’s one worry.

And then the other thing is that I think there's a lot of potential in the development of AI. But the people who are making the AI are only interested in profit, so my other worry is that the potential of AI is not going to be fully used, because the people who are creating it have never set foot into any kind of humanities department or have never really discovered that they have an actual heart inside their bodies. So they're not going to use it for good. And that's, for me, a big missed opportunity. I think if you look at Star Trek, the way they portrayed AI was helpful. It was a free-to-use, objective resource library. People could just speak and say, “computer, tell me…” And they could try medical experiments and simulators, and the AI would be participating. And then you would have artificial intelligence humans, who are also benevolent. And that was a utopia. You know, it would have been great if we paid a little bit more attention to it.

Sometimes my students' writing gets a little bit better, and I think, oh, I'm actually quite happy that they write a bit better now with AI, a bit less sloppy. But if I get fully AI-produced, mediocre nonsense... The emphasis is on mediocre. It’s such a waste of my time, such a waste of their potential, such a waste of their unique, flawed, creative brain. It’s such a shame. As a tool to sharpen things a little bit, it can be a great tool, but not as main brain. The main brain still needs to be your brain.

And I hope more artists and people who are interested in the humanities and governments who aren't evil will work on developing AI for good stuff. What if more artists created things like AI, which is already happening in creative coding and so on, and approached it from a different angle? Because all the bad traits that we project on AI, greediness, wanting to destroy everything, they're all human traits. The AI doesn't have those by nature.

My last question, were there any questions I didn't ask you that you were hoping I would ask you?

 When you asked me earlier what I try to teach my students, I think one of the important things that I'd like to share with everyone is: the time has come to take off the handbrake, to not be afraid, and just do. Making a playlist, throwing a party, making a painting… It's all important now.  And it might sound crazy, but it's a genuine engagement with your real inner you, what you want, your feelings, and that is important now. It’s important to get in touch with who you are, what you want, and make some art. Put it out in the world, and see where your others are who also feel as you do and join together in a celebratory resistance of art, in art. Anyway, that's what I want to say. I don't know what question for that would be, but if I would be teaching the world something, the one little thing that I have learned is to take off the handbrake. Make art.

Interview conducted by Elizabeth Stice

(Photo credit to Bette A. and Brian Eno)