I was thinking last night--just before bed, as I was too lazy to write it down--about the act of creating art. I'm using the broadest definition of art possible here, whether it's poetry, photography, ceramics, dance, music, juggling... The differences between them all are negligible for this thought process. Basically all arts are skills. You get better at them the more you do. Yet there is a definite point when the artist first begins to practice the skill, where they possess what might appear to be a heightened level of creativity due to their inexperience in the field. In fact, many artists spend their entire careers trying to re-create that initial playfulness or creativity.

So then there are two factors that make a good artist--I would argue--"skill" or the practice of the art, and "creativity" or uniqueness of the art. A very skilled artist is almost always easy to admire, (depending on the art, I suppose, since high skill in some fields is imperceptible to the outside observer) but for most arts, someone who is talented is easy to spot. Yet this alone doesn't make them a master in their field. Examples of this are everywhere, from that really good cover band, to the painter who cranks out portrait after picture-perfect-portrait of nature scenes--and not good ones. I think you probably know what I'm talking about.

I think most fields talk about these ideas in their own semantics. And I'm not pretending to be an expert on any of this stuff. Last night I was just asking myself what I didn't like about this recent performance by one of my favorite jugglers (who is also a good friend of mine), and I realized that in this piece--and a few others I've seen--creativity is carrying the bulk of the load, and there was really no skill involved. (And believe me, there is plenty to tap!)

As an artist myself, in my poetry, I often leave out the skill portion of what I'm doing as an exercise. In fact, I was going to say I don't generally share the results of this labor, but then I realized that right there in my right hand navigation is probably the most frequent example of this--my mindblurbs. Thoughts without reason. Poetry without skill. A creative exercise I try to do at least once a day (and end up doing three times a week or so). But there they are, for everyone to see. I'm a hypocrite again, and I was feeling so smug, so superior. I was thinking to myself, he should never have performed that piece in public. Maybe it was necessary for his creative growth, but he should never have performed it. And if performance is to juggling as publishing is to poetry, I'm just as guilty if not more so. Where are my good poems? Where are my works of skill and creativity? Obviously not here.

I'm going to go hang my head in shame now. (or go to the bookstore, 'cause that's what I planned to do this afternoon anyway.)

it feels good to back up files and delete them. Like a good rainstorm.

Things are still fucked up here at work, and there is no development environment. I don't want to work on a live site, at least not without some kind of safeguard... I really should be doing the work I have to do offline, and then just upload, but DNS is hosed on that particular site anyway, so they won't even know things are fixed. (and I have to do _every_ page, so it's going to be tedious to say the least--maybe I'm just procrastinating.)

I've stumbled onto some really not-so-interesting blogs today. I also discovered The Sex Project which I may contribute to... but nobody really wants to see erotic male photos... (except other guys, but that's another story.) I'm not sure what the the reason for this is, I mean, it's a gross generalization, but I think there is some truth to the idea that men are far more visually stimulated or stimulatable than women are.

I think maybe I'll add links to other blogs on my site... I haven't consciously decided not to do so, I'm just not sure what the best method would be. This whole blogspot thing leaves me feeling a bit too not-in-control.. if that makes any sense. I think it's the templating system that's offputting, and I wonder how the templates work for Movable Type.

I have lots to do, and I'm doing it.

Link of the day: sacrilegious dildos.

If I have learned anything in this universe (in the last 24 hours), I have learned these things:

• It's good to understand how your php script works before you complain about weird "caching" issues and/or go about fucking things up in said script.
• Other people write better poems than you. (whoever you are)
• Business is business--that means it will always be run by stupid people.
• Some tricks are really really hard. That doesn't mean you shouldn't try to learn them anyway, and in fact, makes it more fun to sort of half-learn them, because you can celebrate "almost-getting-it" that many more times.
• Old friends may call at any moment.
• If a game is released on a particular day, and you call a store that is open 24 hours at 11:45pm the night before, that game is not guaranteed to be in stock at that particular store until 10am. Especially if the store is Wal-Mart, and the game is Bomberman Generations, for the Gamecube.

Sometimes, I think unix is like magic. Playing with configuration files and .rc files has to be one of the most fun things I've done at my job. It's especially fun to "source" your .tcshrc file and watch the magical changes happen! I'm sure this kind of thing would get old if it were something I had to do more than even once a week, but for now, I'm content changing my prompt on occasion... just for kicks!

This is similar to the way I feel about programming in general. I'd like to do more of it. I probably wouldn't even mind being assigned more of it, but right now--because I do it so little--I'm like a kid in a candy store playing with php...that is, until the big awful server caches your script in some naughty bad way, and you can't see your changes. Then I get frustrated, and want to kick the server. But my terminal doesn't allow for physical bludgeoning, so I take a deep breath... and wait. Maybe the comments will look better... someday.

My archives are totally fucked up, and I have no idea what's happening. I think it really is time to start using movable type or something. This is rediculous. Every time I go to the "archive template" area on blogger, I get a "page cannot be displayed" error.

I don't know what it is about monday mornings, possibly just that I never get enough sleep, but damn I'm tired, and I haven't been able to focus on much of anything yet. Plus, it's fucking cold outside (and rainy, which normally I would enjoy) and inside, where you would expect the temperature to at least reflect some amount of warmth, the AC is on! Are we fucking popsicles that we need refrigeration?

I feel like crying myself to sleep.