Discussion prompt for tonight’s open post: When is something a complete (if small) work of art, and when is it unfinished?
Glibs of a certain age may be familiar (or at least have heard of) Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony
Now if you listen to it, it doesn’t just end mid-phrase or even mid-movement. It’s unfinished in the sense that the symphony form typically has four movements whereas Schubert’s 8th has only three. And furthermore, we know that this wasn’t some novel form Franzi was writing, he did intend to eventually get around and write a fourth movement — he just had higher priorities.
But not all short music is incomplete, some of it is just a miniature example of the form, like so:
Here we have a strophic form with only two verses, but I’d say it’s a complete work. You could say it’s really just the same verse twice and in that verse literally nothing happens. It’s just a guy at a coffee shop who sees a hottie. The lyrics parallelize both halves of the verse, then he closes it out with a last repeat of the chorus.
Contrast with this:
This is also a two-verse song, but it’s incomplete — verses are missing. In this song, there actually is a narrative progression. The first verse establishes that the character is experiencing visual and auditory hallucinations and implies that they are possibly schizoid or DID. The chorus confirms that this has happened before and that the person has at least some sort of treatment/learned tricks as to how to deal with it. The second verse shows that there is a change happening — time is going by (the weather is changing) and there is another personality trying to reassert themselves. And in the third verse… there is no third verse. All setup, no payoff. Instead of a third verse we just get an instrumental version of the verse and chorus (they knew it needed padding? There was a third verse but the label made them delete it?).
Anyway, talk amongst themselves.
It’s done when it’s done, and it’s never actually done.
From one of my co-workers early on . . . . “there comes a time in every project where you have to shoot the engineers and go into production.”
For most of my projects, it’s done when the bottle is empty.
I took art lessons from a professional artist at her art shop for about a decade. When to call a painting finished was a tough thing to learn. Most people want to keep fixing things but you can overwork a painting. Of course you can under develop it too.
“Done” is a social construct imposed upon black and brown bodies in order to
That’s the best I can do. We’ll just have to leave it undone.
Undun
dun dun DUN!
Un-cle Remus.
…colonialize systems of oppression rooted in white supremacy, cisgenderism, and heteronormativity.
I tried to make some shiny stones with a rock tumbler, but lost patience with it. I had an idea of selling jewelry with it.
For similar reasons, I sold off my mutual fund mini-investment after 5 years. It started at $500 in 2007, went down to $450, then back up to $580. So I made $80 bucks in 5 years. Since then, I’ve stuck with investing in silver and ammo, the other precious metal. My net worth has declined in the past 2 years, mainly because I haven’t been working. My net happiness is up, however.
I was digging through papers today while packing and discovered that my 401K – which I kind of pay no attention to – is almost where it was three years ago. Yay.
Hey Derp, I have a proof of your prime number conjecture. It will publish here Thursday at 11 AM. Some one suggested I make an article of it, so I did.
I look forward to reading it. I may send a link to a professor of number theory at UFL, unless you want to do the honors.
https://people.clas.ufl.edu/alladik/
I emailed him about my conjecture months ago and didn’t get a response. Maybe a proof will get his attention. I live about 40 minutes from the University of Florida in Gainesville.
Good luck Derp.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6OaYPVueW4
This is probably my favorite work of art.
Could it be added to? Perhaps.
Sometimes it’s as good as it’s gonna be.
Thanks for MP. Minne boy made good.
The Pieta?
Hey, I read something and thought you might like it: https://librarianofcelaeno.substack.com/p/the-rock-and-the-egg
Yeah. I saw it in person and it bodied me.
Terrific article too. Thank you very much.
The setting detracts from it. St Peters is so out of scale big that it diminishes the Pieta. I saw it before and after it was attacked. Now you can’t get close enough to really appreciate it. If is was moved to a different church in Rome it would even more s[ectacular. Anyway, that is my $0.02.
Respectfully disagree, Something about it transcended the anti-psycho security.
There is probably not a month that goes by that I don’t look at it.
CAN YOU SMELL *breathes deeply* WHAT THE ROCK IS COOKING?
Kimchee?
I made both traditional kimchi and cucumber kimchi ( based on this lady’s recipe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApQUENQbgiY) this year. The cucumber kimchi was too salty and too spicy. Normally, despite being Minnesotan, I like salty and spicy. I have since added cucumber to it to reduce the saltiness and the spiciness.
The traditional kimchi has yet to be tasted.
Pope Jimbo’s wife STILL refuses to share her recipe for kimchi…
Next time you ask, tell her to blink twice if she’s being detained against her will.
Can one be willfully detained?
Creosote Achilles has your answer.
There it is.
The stone carved into fabric in such a way that makes you think you could feel the warp and weft of it…
I am so glad I got to see it in real life.
Same. Mind blowing.
The good thing about self-publishing is that you control your work.
The bad thing about self-publishing is that it’s never done. You control your work, but can you control yourself?
Me, no, I can’t. Fixing to do a reboot on my first book, which has already been re-edited. I wrote that in 2007. I cannot leave that fucker alone.
An underrated masterpiece of both art and music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjlusi_h_XA
Don’t forget look at the bottom for the immortal lyrics.
After listening to this, I conclude that the Black Sabbath original was incomplete.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tnd4TsaOuqo
“Put the mouse down and back away from the workstation” is a phrase I’ve been known to use with a perfectionist Mech E who works for me.
Another danger is that when you throw a bunch of brilliant physicists into a room together when it’s no-shit prototype build time, they tend to get all brain-stormy and over complicate what is already a thorny problem.
I call it “the good idea fairy” and I have to herd them gently back onto the plan: “uh-oh—do I detect the good idea fairy over here? I will slap that bitch DOWN.”
I have a coworker who over-complicates things, and me and my boss – whom I have known for 15+ years – just kind of chuckle.
I am the opposite; I like simple.
Possibly because I come from an IT operations/infrastructure background, I too have a strong bias towards ‘the simplest thing that will work’.
Software developer. This guy writes SQL scripts that only he knows WTF is going on. I’m supposed to review this shit and I’m like, I don’t have all day.
“There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens”
We just have to know when it’s that time. It’s tough but that damned calendar is talking and not always our friend.
Turn! Turn! Turn! – The Byrds
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVOJla2vYx8
The Engineering answer to most things: “it depends”.
If it’s really a work of art, then it’s when the artist says it’s done, I suppose.
Some things are more of a “project” or a “design”, so for those I always tell my folks “good is better than perfect”, meaning they should get it good and then let everybody else see it and mess with it, and then maybe do some refinement. This is true whether it’s a design, or an analysis, or a data system, or whatever. So it’s finished and unfinished at the same time – depending on your intentions it might be a prototype or just the first finished version. Then if you decide to refine it some you do. At some point it’s finished because you declare it to be so, even though there may be other ideas that could be put into place – it’s just the right time and circumstance for it to be done.
I struggle with this when it comes to design, mine and others. I have to reign in myself and by team. Especially important is to know when good enough has been reached.
I’ve taken 3 months to finish the inside of my garage to meet the vision I had. If I just winged it I would hate it every time I went inside. At the same time I need to get it done to accommodate my electrical timing and the lift install. This forced me to move from thinking to doing.
Constraints are good.
Some “works of art” are “done” very quickly.
Late to responding to cyto: cogs in a machine is a perfect metaphor for requiring people to show up in the office. For every one of cyto’s upsides and downsides, I’ve seen the very opposite. The office politics, the fucking off on non-work, putting in time just to put in time, people getting relegated because they’re too young/new/around too long/boss’ pita. I’ve been part of great teams that were never in the same office or state. I’ve seen lone wolves get the opportunity far ahead of what they normally would and totally run with it. Someone who over delivers stands out whether in person or on the other side of country.
I have a bias towards remote work, but I don’t think there’s one right answer and definitely not one unchanging right answer. It’s all about trade offs, and worse there’s people thrown into the mix. People are complicated, not robots. Someone telling you they know the secret sauce for perfect results is a huckster.
Projects? I have a six month backlog of Fractal stuff alone, not to mention the guitar builds,
Cheers!
I’m suffering through America’s Got Talent to watch Steel Panther perform. How do people watch these shows? Oh how I suffer for art.
You could be watching Robyn Hood instead. It’s a modern race-and gender swapped retelling of a classic story. It’s like Hamilton. You’ll never guess who the bad guy is.
This https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robyn_Hood ?
“ the series follows the young activist rapper Robyn and her anti-authoritarian masked hip-hop band The Hood living in a working class area in the fictional city of New Nottingham as they battle with “the corrupt elite” including a property developer and The Sheriff. Corus Entertainment executive Troy Reeb described the series as a “dark and gritty take”, featuring “a heroine challenging the status quo and fighting oppression”.[1]”
That’s Poe’s Law territory.
LOL the whole thing is beyond parody from start to end. Who knows if it’s real?!
Me?
Are you a white male? Then, yes, it’s you.
Of course I am. You couldn’t tell from my avatar?
It’s the bloody Prince Of Darkness, inni’t?
Brohimi. Does anyone know what that means in old Firster?
Brahimi is an alternative form of Ibrahimi, an Arabic surname.
Please pull your hand out of my ass?
NTTIATWWT
I’ll take your hand out of your ass and ram it through your stomach!
Just hit 80,000 words for my book. Yay me. It’s the longest thing I’ve ever written. Time for another can of Monte Carlo lager.
No rain or wind here. The hurricane warnings were quite literally overblown.
Lemme FTFY:
(•_•)
The hurricane warnings were quite literally…
( •_•)>⌐■-■
(⌐■_■)
overblown.
Boom!
The traditional response would be more along the lines of:
YEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!
Of course it was. There was only so much seconding done in the last year. The Great Firster is merciful after all.
Give it a bit of time. The storm is moving slowly.
If it takes a right turn overnight, we’ll be in for a memorable Wednesday.
Nothing left to cut.
https://honey.com/about-the-nhb
I hope all participants to HH make their contributions to Big Honey.
You know what your problem is, Gustave? You’ve gotten so caught up in this sugar business that you’ve forgotten the taste of real honey!
Real honey tastes waxy and smells like a beekeeper’s cottage.
I think I just saw one of the cringiest videos ever on Facebook. “What I eat in a day as a cancer expert.”
That’s a I fucking love science culture video.
Methinky no one works here but Rufus.
I just got back from a Modest Mouse/Pixies show in Indy. Not the best I’ve ever seen, but good times with the bro and a tic or two off my list. Glad I did it and would again.
I suppose I might not be unemployed SOON, as Orientation Take II is on Thursday. I’ve healed quite well and the proximity to home, the tasks of the job, and flexibility to mix w my outpatient coming up, it’s comin’ up gold. One step at a time.
Onward. Upward. Always.
Good gravy. I thought the retards around here were, well, retarded
https://wagesla.lacity.org/sites/g/files/wph1941/files/2022-07/Hotel%20Worker%20Protection%20Ordinance.pdf
Good morning all!
24 hours of uninterrupted internet, and still going. Finally!
Back to some electronica today.
First, the obscure, from Walter Holland’s Relativity, we have The Inertial Mass.
Then, the first Depeche Mode tune I ever heard, Any Second Now (instrumental). Their first album has a version with voices; I like this better.
Well, somebody’s playing silly buggers with the Depeche Mode. Try this.
I give up.
That’s the spirit!
Was this what you were after, Shirley? (I think the URL in your link may have just been missing the last letter.)
That’s the one! Thank you bigot!!
I’m going to assume that’s an unfortunate autocorrect for “bigly.” 😄 More coffee?? 😉
Wake up and get yer groove on!
😉✌
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jCG2XNaODnM
🎶🎶
Nice morning song Sean.
G’mornin folks.
Nearly dawn down in Florida Man Land, and it looks like the hurricane is passing safely to the west of us. Looking at the map, I’m in Gainesville (right center) and Derpetologist is in Chiefland, WSW of Gainesville. Lackadaisical and BrettL are quite a ways south, and out of danger. The storm is passing well to the west of us.
We’re getting kinda lucky with this one, as Idalia will come ashore in the most sparsely populated coastal region of Florida outside of the Everglades — not that that’s any consolation to the few folks who live in the area. I expect the town of Perry to have substantial wind damage, possibly from tornadoes, and plenty of local flooding in the Suwannee River basin. A few isolated coastal communities will get walloped by the storm surge. All in all, this one could’ve been a lot worse.
Keep your meth dry!
Good morning, Shpip, Sean, and Shirley!
Shpip, thanks for the update, and I’m glad that you and yours are safe and that relatively few people have been subjected to the worst of Idalia, at least so far.
And he didn’t even mention the First Glib of them all. The one who rules them all.
What does Webdom have to do with the hurricane?
Yup, got lucky again. Just a little rain and wind here, used to get worse on the regular up north, though I feel that high winds are a much rarer occasion here and this have a better chance of causing trouble in any one event.
Glad for you! Whereabouts did you live up nort’?
Buffalo, not exactly renowned for good weather.
Come on, it’s just a little lake effect.
Ackshually, it’s a Great Lake effect. 😁
Oh, yeah! Got in-laws in far western NY (closer to Erie, PA, than to Buffalo.) They know from that lake (Erie)-effect snow! 🥶
My uncle lives near Erie. I think they actually have it worse than Buffalo, at least in terms of snow. It feels like it’s always windy in Buffalo, in five years I want able to play badminton outside even once.
Down south we got one really nasty feeder band yesterday, and that is about it. The storm was hundreds of miles away at the time. These things are really amazingly powerful. 50mph winds, a few inches of rain, trees and branches knocked about… all from 200 miles away.
Mornin’
Glad to hear you and other glibs have been spared. Amazing what can be accomplished with a bit of hyssop and lamb’s blood.
Morning, Glibs.
I woke up when I was supposed to be leaving the house, so I had to cut short socializing time to make it through my morning routine and make it to the office before my start time.
I made it, but I’m annoyed that I had to rush.
Mornin’
Off to Lawn Guyland to attend a funeral. It’s been a long time since I had to drive through NYC during rush hour. I am so looking forward to this.
I assume you knew the person. Or are you a part-time eulogist now?
Dad of Mrs. Patzer’s best friend’s (and Godfather to our younger son) husband.
Good morning, ‘patzie & U. ‘Patzie, I’m sorry you have to attend a funeral anywhere, much less take such an unfortunate route at an unfortunate time. 🙁
Feel-bad, but then feel-good story for the morning, because, after all, the Internet is made of cats. 😿😺
Aww.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vEtbfzMLVWU
Good morning!
I will have to push back on the “it’s finished when the artist says it’s finished.”
If you set up a Chekov’s gun, but never fire it, the work is not finished. Either fire the damn thing or keep it in the drawer.
Example: in a sequel, a main character from the original (who was in high school at that time) begins the sequel pregnant. Very pregnant. Multiple times it’s mentioned how near to delivery she is. And she never gives birth. Obviously someone had a deadline and published without either the conclusion of that arc or going back and editing it out.
The baby had a no sense of dramatic timing, and afterwards didn’t want to be anticlimactic.
I watched “Justice League”.
Just because the artist said it was finished and they put it in theaters, don’t be under the illusion that it was finished. What a mess.
Also, Season 8 of Game of Thrones. Clearly not finished. Yet they slapped some paint on the canvas to put hair on the Mona Lisa and called it finished, even though she’s clearly not supposed to be a blond, and that JoJo Sewa bow is way out of place.
That example is from Red, White, and Tuna.
I highly recommend everyone watch the original, Greater Tuna. It’s a fantastic two-man show that was written by two guys who wanted to GTFO of TX and make a life in the theater. The technical aspects of it ae just amazing (coordinating a story while having half of the (large) cast be played by each actor, costume change times, etc). Thematically, they obviously had some strong dislike of TX, (one surmises they might have been a wee bit gay in a small town in the 1970s) but they are so honest in their portayal that TX audiences absolutely love the show. Unfortunately, it was so successful that they kind of sold out and the sequels are all bright happy comedies.
Good morning all. Am I ever finished drinking coffee? No. I am not.
At some point, coffee’s job is done for the day
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/b8/82/49/b8824923fb2e8381b6dbc80b9b092b28.jpg