It's funny how you can lose sight of things. Small compromises, little sacrifices, and all of a sudden you realize all the things you are missing in your life.
The theme of this post: Where is the Art?
Art is not something that people go to museums to see. Being an artist is not an unachievable state, possessed only by the impressionist painters and german tenors and japanese paper-folders. Art is a way for you to take something, and SHOW IT TO PEOPLE, in a way that maybe they would never have seen.
Messaien famously orchestrated birdsong. Late in his life, when asked what his favorite sounds were, Stravinsky replied with 'New York City Traffic.' The greats will take something familiar to everyone, and portray it over again, not changed, but distilled. What is birdsong? The raises and drops, the sweetness, what is the very essence of birdsong? How can you show that to people?
It's hard to wake up in the morning and remember that you are an artist. For all the things you remember in the morning, in that hazy moment between asleep and cold, it is a sign that they are things you have forgotten. Did I forget I was an artist? Did I forget that I had within me this drive to take the way I saw the world, totally completely unique and distinct from the way the world is seen by others, and show it? yes.
Art is one part drive, four parts technical proficiency, and two parts chance. The technical proficiency is what will evade most. For every postmodernist painter who stumbles into the studio at 4 in the afternoon, hair of the dog and a multivitamin, there is a quiet and determined illustrator who pays his taxes, wakes with the sun, and carefully hones his craft.
Art is craft with vision. Vision devoid of skill will fail to communicate. The most perfect of the sunrises, most pure of the birdsong, most beautiful and soul-stirring emotion in the world, is limited only in the skill of the artist.
This is something I have struggled with all my life. Communication, in and of itself, is art. To take the idea that you yourself hold within your mind and give it to others, present it as if it were a gift to the world, is communication. Communication is the essence of Art.
What is your art? How do you capture your world? How do you gather together the most important things, only the important things, and what is your craft? How do you put them back together, into one cohesive vision?
Programming is, at its root, an art. It is taking the way you think that things should be - an interaction, an exchange, the wonder of discovering knowledge and the joy at rediscovering an old friend - and giving them to the world. Art is a gift. There is craft to it, yes. You must be technically proficient (four parts). You must have drive (one part). And always there is chance. There is the moment of brilliance, the flash of understanding, the happenstance change that turns to genius. This holds true for musician, for composer, and for programmer.
Take the world, see it, and reflect it in your Art. Craft it, refine it, practice it, and SHARE it.
Java?
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