Flavigula

…and how I was told time and time again back in the old days that I should always listen to every one’s opinion about each piece and change it accordingly to please as many as possible (of my friends, of course, who were pretty much the only ones listening, anyway). I never should have listened to this and certainly do not now. I am happy that Tony and I do not interfere with each others’ compositional process. We seem to both appreciate the other. We do make suggestions at multitudes of points. Some are employed. Others are sloughed away. I think we are walking our own path.

Why do I suppose we are?

What contradistinguishes Artists from Carpenters is the process of creation. The former is inspired, sure, by myriad sources, but he melds those inspirations into a whole, making it his own. He invents using tools. At times he even forges his own tools to invent with. And so on. He is the architect and sometimes also the builder of these designs. And, most importantly, he does not try to please anyone but his own inner muse. Therefore, he walks his own path. Whether he receives praise or not for his creation is not an issue for him. He has created. He moves on to create more.

The Carpenter, on the other hand, which is what most people are who call themselves mistakenly artists, has a scheme in mind. He has a plan laid out for him. He is its slave. The room for expression is minimal. Though he feels he is inserting some of his own artistry into the technique he has learned to mimic over hours, days, months, years of practise, he is mistaken. A Carpenter is just a tool for an Artist. They are, as the tired saying goes, a dime a dozen.

I recall a heated conversation in Polo back in most likely 2005 where Christian, Karolina and I discussed the idea of Carpenters and Artists. Christian wanted to insert a new category - a Composer - which is right above Artist. He is an imbecile. He wants to be called an Artist, and so do most of his ilk, but they are all carpenters. They are trained monkeys just like guitarists whose muscle memory is flashier than their brain’s computational power.

Part 17

After the Xmas excursion to Hobbs and its Casino, I am sitting again in my bed. It is my normal location at this time of the evening. I am not ashamed of this routine yet. I have found vigor in it lately, though I know it will stagnate me if perpetuated for too long. Already I feel a nag in some twitching neuron telling me to rest from music making this evening and break the habit. I may do just that. Tomorrow I may go to Java Jitterz and create there for a while, despite the slushy noise within the establishment. If I am still working on Filter, it may contribute.

Approximately two hours were spent working on the Hope For Wildlife web site. It is running now on Bluehost here after a bit of wily debugging! The main problem was the request.path was having /dispatch.fcgi prepended. This shat up my original code a bit.

I also wrote some very ugly, hackish code which will, I am absolutely sure, cause big problems in the future. I won’t even understand what I was thinking in a few weeks. Marvellous:

- if !submenus.blank?
  #buttons
    - cols = organize_columns submenus, column_headers
    - if columns == 1
      #left.span-9
        - cols.values.flatten.each do |submenu|
          %a.round{:href => "/pages/#{page}/#{submenu}"}
            = format_menu_name submenu
    - else
      - c_keys = cols.keys
      #left.span-9
        - if c_keys[0].is_a? String
          .column_header
            = c_keys[0]
        - cols[c_keys[0]].each do |submenu|
          %a.round{:href => "/pages/#{page}/#{submenu}"}
            = format_menu_name submenu
      #right.span-9
        - if c_keys[1].is_a? String
          .column_header
            = c_keys[1]
        - cols[c_keys[1]].each do |submenu|
          %a.round{:href => "/pages/#{page}/#{submenu}"}
            = format_menu_name submenu


def organize_columns(submenus, column_headers = nil)
  if column_headers
    ch_keys = column_headers.keys
    one = submenus.select do |submenu|
      column_headers[ch_keys[0]].match(submenu)
    end
    two = submenus.select do |submenu|
      column_headers[ch_keys[1]].match(submenu)
    end
  else
    ch_keys = [ 1, 2 ]
    one, two = (submenus.size == 1 ? [submenus,[]] : [submenus[0..(submenus.size / 2)], submenus[(submenus.size / 2 + 1)..-1]])
  end
  { ch_keys[0] => one, ch_keys[1] => two }
end

Pretty stupid, eh? If anyone is bored enough to have the desire to look at the whole project, then I direct you to its github home.

I have decided to not continue my work on what I am simply calling The Album (yes, I need to name it, much as I did Filter in yesterday’s entry) this evening. If inspiration smacks me, I’ll contradict this stance, of course. One decision I reached today regarding it was to actually add a piece after Fold. If you have been living within my brain for the last two years, this radical idea may come as a near electrocution for you, but it makes sense to me. I wrote about it also in my pocketmod whilst taking my almost daily cleansing stroll about the Seminole park. The inspiration was in part from Filter and its portion which has the snare and rhodes bashing away on offbeats, and from Les Cercles d’Horus by Univers Zero, which I listened to at the casino.

I shall continue Cloud Atlas now.