What’s originality?

I just read a fascinating article by Matthew Kajcienski, a man responsible for ABC’s Good Morning America theme amongst a series of adverts and other minor orchestral work. In it, he discusses the relationship between composers and orchestrators. I can’t really write it better than he does (and it’d be arrogant to do so) so here’s an excerpt (rest of the post below the cut):

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Maintenance

Much of the site’s going to be offline for 24 hours starting about 9pm GMT tonight. I’m switching hosting packages to something more affordable, so images, some of the audio, and a few other things here and there (like the custom font headers) will be squiffy until then. It should still be readable (and the Tumblr dashboard shouldn’t suffer any ill effects) but until tomorrow, bear with me.

Linguistic accuracies and JESUS CHRIST WHY?

I like language.

Fuck me, that’s a vague statement. What I should say is that I like the little curiosities about language. The sort of thing you study in elementary linguistics… apart from a bit on Ferdinand de Saussure and even less on Jaques Derrida, I’m completely ignorant. This is, to an extent, deliberate. I like having an element of mystery there with language, and studying it at a surface level rather than exposing the basic psychological impulses keeps that level of intrigue there.

Below the cut, I’m going to talk with no intellectual backup whatsoever about the complications of an atheist using phrases like “oh my God” and the thing that really turned me onto amateur linguistics. It might be boring. I’ve got no real filter for that, sorry.

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Finally - a sunset in York

I’m hopelessly simple when it comes to natural phenomena, and like what everyone else does: sunsets are stunning, an cloudless night sky full of stars is just perfect, and when I saw the moon reflecting off the sea in Scarborough, I felt absolutely, totally at peace. Sure, I’m unoriginal, but at least I’m in touch with nature.

My university, of course, has none of these. There are too many buildings on campus to see the sun in the last hour or so of it falling, too much light pollution to really make out anything but the brightest stars, and I’m an hour’s train ride away from the sea (and the “lake” we have isn’t great, given it’s got a sediment on the bottom of about two metres’ worth of duck shit). In fact, generally the university’s a perfect example of appearances being deceiving - you can’t even sit on the grass, given the fact that you’ll probably sit on what’s left of a bird’s lunch if you do. The university thought it’d be great to import a load of birds to make it seem more “natural” - in fact, all they really did was force everyone indoors.

This all granted, that’s just the university. I’ve been struggling to find a decent place to watch the sun go down since I started here, and I think I finally found it. Today was a day without a cloud in the sky, and I woke up at 4pm (don’t ask), so as soon as I was showered and dressed I headed out to the Millennium Bridge and sat there, Gil Scott-Heron in my ears, and from a point slightly higher than the rest of what’s probably one of the flattest cities in the UK, I saw a sunset go from blue, to orange, to yellow, then a strange sort of lilac, and finally to blue once more, a few shades darker than before.

Seeing it recalled that same feeling of sitting on the pier in Scarborough - at that time, only a couple of people were there to see it too, and I couldn’t help but wonder why. We’re a nation of people forced indoors by our own fear of the elements, or we sanitise our love of the outdoors by playing within stadia and walled courts - there’s no real sense of openness or exploration in the ages between 12 and 40, and that’s a shame.

Temporary measures/a load of really shitty questions answered

(image via this rather beautiful blog. Check it out if you like Paris, or vintage-style photography)

It had to come to an end, I suppose. Effective now, I’ve disabled anonymous “questions” from the Tumblr Ask feature. The reason for this is one you might expect if you’ve been reading my previous posts - I’ve had a bit of a backlash from the previous post about the Tumblr user curioushair. Of course, this by itself isn’t an issue. I welcome criticism, when it’s helpful or productive. Needless to say, none of the ten or so anonymous comments I got had either of these qualities. Well, perhaps one. But that was still out of context - informative on an unrelated level.

To address a few general issues, then, plus a couple of my own, and then hopefully we can all get back to normal (all below the cut - come on, I’m not going to keep spamming people with this):

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