He sang nursery rhymes to paralyse the wolves that eddy out the corner of his eye

You know how you read that author’s always hate been asked where their inspiration, their ideas, their creative drive comes from? Every time, you read interviews you hear how they hate that. They roll their eyes, they shrug, the give the same pat answers. The place they are in, the drugs they have taken, the swing of the hips of the girl just left.

Then we get the people who think programming is mechanical, obvious and in no way creative. Those people don’t understand. There is as much craft in code as in prose. In fact, it is just another form of prose. So much so you can look at a snippet and tell who wrote it. (Of course, those people invariably don’t understand it, and are being the usual sort of literary snobs. In fact, it isn’t as if they are even creators, those people, they have read Anna Karenina and think they hold forth on every subject.)

Music is seen in the same vein, in that those who can write literature are above the base and souless world of machinery. Well, it is widely known I failed in my attempts to produce a novel (quote: Yes, it makes sense to people who know how you talk, how you explain yourself, but to others it is a stream-of-consciousness mess. You and James Joyce would have made good drinking partners), and this weblog is really just my meandering fingers that aren’t in anyway connected to my head. I gave up long ago on that, and wend my own way here. I hope my voice comes through, but not enough that I couldn’t entertain in Real Life. Oh, I can still give good conversation in that instance. Try me!

I always wonder, these days, when I pick up my guitar why I never did in the years of my youth, why I was content to only listen, and, in my contrary way, only listen to the most achingly hip skinny white lads with guitars beat combos. (An over-simplification, natch, not even played for comedic effect.) While standing in the kitchen on a satdeh morn, a tune came into my head. (Lyrics always come into my head, sometimes with a tune, sometimes without. This time it was just a tune.) An hour later, some ebow-ing later, some scribbled notes to remind me what I had played later, I had the semblance of a song. Thereafter I couldn’t fit anything from my lyric book to it, so I decided to stick the guitar through some effects, add a disco beat, slap a bit of poetry on top, and there you have it. Thirty Spokes holds the results. (Called ‘Hark To Delphi’, first up, and I know, an obvious poem. So sue me. I must mail the guy who spake it, and point him to how people misuse his work.)

The thing about Hark to Delphi is that while a core of the original tune remains, it isn’t the Jack White/Tangerine Dream mashup I wanted it to be. (More Aphex Twin, to my horror, me neither being an Old Skool nor nu-rave raver. Although during our workout on Friday I was humming along to quite a few old rave tunes.) And start to current state was two hours, which given I am a hacking amateur, I don’t consider that bad. I must pay tribute to #music, who are an endless source of wonderous advice. Knowledgable chaps, those lot.

Wait, I seem to have lost the thread of what I was going to say. (See why I didn’t get along with the conventional novel style? Then again, neither does Pynchon.) I like creating. Code, words, music. There is a commonality in there, and not even the mathematical one, the underlying physical truth of it all. There is a bigger picture there, sometimes I can see the edge of it.

Individually crafted