Charlie Olvera: A Blog

To serve as a vessel for Javascript.  Disregard this post please.

But I can’t figure out for the life of me how to get the comments to appear above the little dividing line, so look below the latest post for the comment link to that post.  Everybody dig?

Is a really great font.  I mean, the associations with Wes Anderson (and, via proxy, hipster art) I could do without, but, regardless of all that, Futura is just about at the top of the heap in terms of sans serif fonts.  It doesn’t look cold and boring the way so much of Web 2.0 does.  Futura is the real deal.

Irrespective of discipline, is any high-level creative activity any different, philosophically?  Am I, as a composer writing music with experimental aims, any different than a scientist looking for a cure for a disease or a programmer searching for a digital solution to a problem?

I love Iannis Xenakis’s quote that “it is necessary for the composer to always remain an immigrant”.  I used to love it because I thought it meant an end to trite, nationalistic music, no matter what the aims.  Really, though, I think that Xenakis was talking about distancing yourself from your composition.  So often we imbue what we create with such emotion, to the point where supposed “failures” crush us.  However, a chemist’s experiment which disproves his hypothesis is not a failure, but merely an answer to a question.  I would argue that it is necessary for experimental composers to remain distanced from their compositions in terms of emotion.  Only in this manner can we experience the full complement of learning that comes with experimentation.