Dear Log,
From Eno's diary (1995-12-07): "Rationality is what we do to organize the world, to make it possible to predict. Art is the rehearsal for the inapplicability and failure of that process."
Since programming is about organizing for what you predict but always checking for whether it failed, does that make it artistic rationality? Or just pure rationality that knows its limits?
Eno also says: "if you don't call it art, you're likely to get a better result".
Another Eno gem: "The computer [he was using some Mac and presumably MacOS 7.0.0.0.0.0.0] crashes so regularly, taking with it all the work since the last crash, that I have to find a way of reminding myself to save all the time. I do this by balancing a book on my head while I'm working. It falls off so often that I remember to save. Interesting spin-off ââ¬â in order to keep the book there at all I have to sit well, and move my eyes more than my head. Now I'm starting to think this is the way to always use a computer."
Music notes:
The new Jimmy Eat World (/Bleed American/) is really infectiously good.
The new Laurie Anderson (/Life on a String/) is freaky and/or deaky, but in a zippy Tom Waits meets Nelson Riddle kinda way.
The mp3s that I have that are holding up the best: Eno /Music for Airports/, especially track 1; and Grieg's "Ballade in G minor", and the two Elegies, "Last Spring" and "Wounded Heart". Very Débussy-like, but much more sparse.
