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PEOPLE MAGAZINE: Bette A. and Brian Eno Implore Readers to Find Space in Silence via Slow Stories (Exclusive)

"Bette's words and the music are both triggers, they create a kind of condition that you then step into and start to navigate around," Eno tells PEOPLE

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By Chris Barilla

NEED TO KNOW

  • Bette A. and Brian Eno have released a new project, titled Slow Stories, which marries the former’s writing prowess with the latter’s encyclopedic knowledge of ambient music to create an experience seeking to redefine readers’ relationship with silence
  • “The making of the stories took 20 years. There was no pressure, no deadline, so they shaped just by themselves,” Bette A. shares in conversation with PEOPLE
  • Eno adds that “the story is as much to do with what’s happening in your mind as to do with what Bette is saying”

Bette A. and Brian Eno want to redefine our relationship with silence.

The duo, who previously worked together on the 2024 book What Art Does: An Unfinished Theory, have teamed up once again to beg a question often lost in translation in the modern day: how can we consciously slow ourselves down?

“It’s very interesting how everything in our technology and our recent cultural history keeps saying make it faster, make it more colorful, make it fuller, make it richer. When something like this comes along, which says, ‘No, actually leave a lot of stuff out,’ it’s so new and refreshing, I think,” Eno says in conversation with PEOPLE about his and Bette A.’s new project, Slow Stories.

The new initiative marries a book penned by Bette A. and accompanying audio experience created by the Joshua Tree producer, limited to just 444 physical copies.

Together, the pair have created a level of visual and auditory immersion in Slow Stories that wholly transports the reader to an ethereal state akin to a “guided daydream.” For Bette A.’s part, the author wrote a series of various short narratives traversing alternate reality moments from “pasts that never happened and futures that will never occur,” that substantiates the pair of artists’ mission of meriting intentional pause and silence.
'Slow Stories' by Bette A.
‘Slow Stories’ by Bette A.Courtesy of Bette A.

“The making of the stories took 20 years. There was no pressure, no deadline, so they shaped just by themselves,” Bette A. shares. “Putting time on it allowed me to forget what my reason was to write that story or some opinion I was trying to work in. It allowed me to be enchanted by the details that I didn’t very consciously come up with and allowed it to surprise me.”

At its core, Slow Stories is less a front-to-back narrative than a collection of ideas working towards a goal. “So many stories are about emotions, about feelings and how to handle the other people in the outside world. And that surprised me as well,” the author shares of its spiritual context, while driving home how intentional every aspect of the project, including her spoken word accompaniment over Eno’s ambient music, was to its final execution and overall message.

“He said, ‘Go slower, go slower, go slower,’ in the recording to the point where it felt a bit uncomfortable, like a long silence. And now I love it,” she remembers of recording the project. “The sentences just gained so much weight and meaning by giving them so much space.”

To Eno, the silence present on Slow Stories is a firm protest against the often-distracting circumstances of modern day life.

“If you think about it’s so obvious that we carry around with us now devices to continually distract ourselves,” he says. “If that bloody [phone] is sitting there, the moment my mind is not engaged, I’ll pick it up. It’s like eating sweets all the time … the moment there isn’t something in my mouth, ‘Oh, I’ll put another candy in.’ I just want to get out of that habit. In a way, you have to curate the space around you and say, ‘I’m not having that thing in that space because I know what it does to me.’ “

“We’re all like alcoholics,” he adds. “We’re constantly buying more bottles and putting them around ourselves and then wondering why we’re drunk all the time.”

Bette A. and Brian Eno
Bette A. and Brian Eno.Mungo McLagga

He further notes that as a result of their delivery method on Slow Stories, that “the story is as much to do with what’s happening in your mind as to do with what Bette is saying.”

“So I started to think perhaps a lot of what we call our composition isn’t really our composition. It’s something that we make that triggers a composition to happen in somebody else’s mind,” Eno adds. “It’s not assertive. It’s not demanding your attention all the time. In fact, it keeps stopping. It’s sort of saying, ‘Okay, now you wander off on your own for a bit, and then I’ll say something else.’ “

Ultimately, Bette A. is looking to create a new, unique and thought-provoking internal safe space for her readers. “I hope they come away with some feeling of there’s a whole world inside of me where I can spend time. And It’s interesting there,” she shares. “For the people who do have the time and do want to have this experience, I’m going to give them a really gentle story that allows a lot of space for their own mind and their own rest.”

Slow Stories is out now via Unnamed Press,  as a limited edition of 444 bundles, each containing a hardcover book, a vinyl record and a roughly 8×8 inch numbered, hand-painted panel, which has been signed by Bette A. and Eno.

The proceeds from the project have also been allocated to the artists’ respective choice charities. In Bette A.’s case, she is supporting The Heroines! Movement, a global organization rallying around women role models, co-founded by the author herself. As for Eno, he is supporting Earth Percent, a charity that channels funds from the music industry to organizations that do the most impactful work around the climate emergencies.

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