http://music.guardian.co.uk/rock/story/0,,2150203,00.html

oh yes! me too, Robyn. And yet my brother, who is in the artistic vein musically etc, is a clean freak. Who would credit it?

Hum... I take the Quentin Crisp approach to dust – once its two inches thick, it's all much of a muchness and, anyway, what did…

it appears that Tillman was not simply killed in a tragic accident by friendly fire, but killed deliberately by his fellow soldiers

folks tend to forget her Room of One's Own, came with enough money to hire an ill-paid servant to clean it.

I have several rooms of my own and I can barely be bothered cleaning any of them, which, um, must provide a great background for me to be fruitful…

Whoever said artists had to be nice people?

Not a claim I'm prone to making – but I guess it's much easier to romanticise the starving artist when you've never had to do any such thing. And Virginia Stephens – later Mrs Leonard Woolf – most certainly didn't; folks tend…

velvet underground and nico was the first album i remember making me really sit up and listen to music. i was given a copy of never mind the bollocks when i was 16, and went, "wtf!?" but never became a punk.…

Wasn't Virginia Wolf's Schtick that you needed to have an independant financial existence to write and create – hence "A Room of One's Own"

Yes, Andrew, and Fabian Socialism (well, at least the variety practiced by the Bloomsbury Group) never meant remembering the servants' names, paying them particularly well and…

Surely, you can not be saying that.

I personally am not, but others might, and there is no truth of the matter. Most people would prefer Michaelangelo to McDonalds, but if popularity is your only criterion, Stephen King is probably the greatest artist in print ever, and Hollywood makes the…

There's no truth, just taste.

That is so wrong. By that logic Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling is no greater or less great as art than a McDonalds billboard; it's just a matter of which the viewer prefers. Surely, you can not be saying that.

"Ah, good taste! What a dreadful…

Code is a tool you use to construct…

She was 47, not skinny and not blonde. Just cool.

IC. The bio I read said 'statuesque blonde' which sounds hot, if not necessarily skinny, to me.

And as for the art in programming and computer games, I have…

Nico's solo albums are some of the finest ever made. Yes, they are bleak and difficult, but also incredibly beautiful and rewarding to listen to.

I'd forgotten, but in the story I make very prominent notice of the quality of her singing live. She always had the reputation of not…

Nothing like a well-timed romantic utterance from a hot young blonde. Is it art? I like to think so.

She was 47, not skinny and not blonde. Just cool.

"I really have to choose very carefully what I sing. I have to restrict my vocabulary. Some songs, the old ones, they sound more religious … they're more …still, like as if I hadn't already become a nihilist.""

Nico's solo albums are some of the finest ever made. Yes, they…

The whole interview was full of romantic utterances that might not have borne rigorous scrutiny but sounded marvellous at the time.

Likewise, my original comment.

You, I suspect, are confusing kitsch with catharsis.

I can't work out if that's a diss. Certainly a lot of catharsis is kitch. Particularly loving Goethe. My diss >-)

I think one point has been overlooked. Nico's statement is not about the difference between making money from your art and not, but about the inability of the financially secure person to have much insight into the human condition.

The whole interview was full of romantic utterances that might not…

Tell me you haven't ever experienced a powerful urge to kill in an online game? :-0 Or cried when you lost your last life just before reaching the high score in an arcade? ;-)

Nothing like the sensation of the transcendant sublime I experience reading Goethe or the first time…

Code can be dull & derivative, or beautiful / exciting / sheer genius, but creativity is a facet that I don't think programmers are necessarily trying to achieve.

**That* is exactly what is wrong with most programming today. When you make humans into machines, you tend to find they are very…

Art can make a room full of non-artists feel the same powerful emotions.

Tell me you haven't ever experienced a powerful urge to kill in an online game? :-0 Or cried when you lost your last life just before reaching the high score in an arcade? ;-)

But sure, some…

Clearly two alien cultures unable to communicate

*sigh* the story of my career. For five minutes I thought it'd be quite fun to be a business analyst. But no.

There's plenty of room in the programming world for such attributes as beauty & innovation,…

1) No one was ever moved to weep by a line of code.

*coff* Just because you can't comprehend it, doesn't mean it's never happened. There are a couple of open-source modules that have moved me to tears. Granted, that's after wading through a whole lot of truly abysmal legacy…

But I admit that I probably just don't get the subtlety of being a coder in a big shop.

"You start coding, I'll find out what they want" is always entertaining. But is it art?

Code comments – now those can be art.

I think one point has been overlooked. Nico's statement is not about the difference between making money from your art and not, but about the inability of the financially secure person to have much insight into the human condition.

Wealthy people (at least those who have never been…

Hello?! Homer! Vergil and Ovid!

Hello?! I've got all of those in a small pile right here whilst I put my library in boxes never to be seen again. Fits nicely in one hand. The other arm is not enough for all the Tolkien though.

OK, they didn't have typewriters…

They lack that obsessive polish and independent existence from their creators.

What crap. LOTR was all about obsession with polish, which is why it took 20 years to write. You might not like the polish, though. And Tolkien is dead, but it's still popular, so I don't get the 'independent…

No one had ever thought to do it on such a scale before though.

Hello?! Homer! Vergil and Ovid!

Why are elves tall chaps with bows instead of little pixie like creatures? Tolkien. Why are goblins snivelly nasty green things that live underground, rather than things that live under toadstools…

3410 makes a good point, but I would amend it slightly.

I would amend it majorly. I don't think it's the experience of poverty that makes poor artists great. It's the reason they are impoverished, which is their devotion to the art itself. There is no set of experiences that…

2) WTF! Paris has infiltrated even this last sanctuary!!

3) Neither LOTR or Harry Potter can be considered "art" as such. They lack that obsessive polish and independent existence from their creators. The former was more-or-less an…

Tp paraphrase Johnny Ramone, does JK Rowling think I have nothing better to do than spend all…

My experiences have all been…

I think it is wrong to say she has no insight into the lives of her audience. She just chooses a strange audience.

Fair play. I am obviously not part of her intended audience! Will we be recalling the great days of Heiress Existence Art in 20 years time? Probably…

Dilletantes like that Hilton woman never spend enough time on one thing or commit to it emotionally (at least Parsons was emotionally committed to his music) to be able to make the emotional connection with the audience – she has no insight into their lives at all.

I would defend…

Amen to that. It took me about four goes to get through the whole thing. I don't reread LOTR much anymore,....

But you have reread it. Which is more than I can say for Potter, and I have more tolerance for that genre than most.

For all these criticisms, most…

Someone who is independently wealthy has no need for their "art" to be financially successful.

As an example, I love Gram Parsons' work. It was mostly unsuccessful while he was alive, though he never starved (he was able to…

It's not completely unheard of, but not very common.

Hmm...by that I meant as a percentage of the full body of code that exists; but compared to, say, music it's probably about the same percentage of pure creativity to derivation. So I think I'm going to have to rethink my…

But every now and then, a programmer gets to formulate a new problem and solve it, all by themselves. Or they get to solve an old problem in a startlingly creative new way.

Absolutely.

.. although in the first instance it's the formulation of the problem that's the creative aspect,…

A poet at some stage has to be poor. And somehow money spoils poetry. It does, it takes away, it changes your original intention. I always become nasty when I have money.

I think one point has been overlooked. Nico's statement is not about the difference between making money from…

zipped through book one, inched through book two, nearly gave up halfway through book three.

Amen to that. It took me about four goes to get through the whole thing. I don't reread LOTR much anymore, but I find myself skipping through long passages, particularly at the beginning of Book1…

Why are elves tall chaps with bows instead of little pixie like creatures? Tolkien. Why are goblins snivelly nasty green things that live underground, rather than things that live under toadstools at the bottom of my garden? Tolkien. Trolls turning to stone in sunlight? He borrowed that one.

Not disputing…

And I think I should add to my 'profit motive muddies art' point that eschewing the profit motive is of course no guarantee of making great art. Most people simply don't have the talent for it.…

Then surely.... the artist with no money may well already be distorting their art in order to survive, and equally, an artist that wants for nothing, can surely also do thier art for its own sake?

It is reasonably true that many great artists have known poverty at some point....…

No one had ever thought to do it on such a scale before though.

Elias Lönnrot's 19th Century Kalevala – which is where Tolkien acknowledges copping most of his licks – runs to over 22,000 verses.
Lönnrot of course was a compiler and collector of existing work rather than an…

http://www.theonering.net/features/notes/introduction.html

*writing as "Tehanu" – which is the name of the 4th book in the Wizard of Earthsea trilogy.

That's a very, very big call. Tolkein drew heavily on Norse mythology. He didn't invent elves, or dwarves, or orcs, or magic rings, or fantasy for that matter, and he freely acknowledged his own influences.

No one had ever thought to do it on such a scale before though. Mythologies…

Me I just say RTFM.
Poetry began when Adam started to name things. (a quote I saw once don't shoot me).
Neruda has a poem on poetry,

Poetry

And it was at that age ... Poetry arrived
in search of me.…

Don't be too hard on the kids though, RB. Consider this: Expecting today's students to know about that song is the chronological equivalent of you being well-versed in the music of 1929.

While I'm not young enough to be the kids, I did know that Rip It Up was a…

Coding is still creating. It's sticking existing elements together to make something new, just like writing or music.

I hear this quite a bit, usually from non-coders, and much as I appreciate the encouragement, it's not strictly true. Elegant code is a beautiful thing for sure, but coding is inventing,…

Tolkien created his own vision with very little outside encouragement, and effectively started an entire genre.

That's a very, very big call. Tolkein drew heavily on Norse mythology. He didn't invent elves, or dwarves, or orcs, or magic rings, or fantasy for that matter, and he freely acknowledged his own…

But it doesnt follow that you have to be poor to do art for its own sake.

Nor did I say that. It's a correlation, not a cause. Those few people who were both highly talented and also born rich have created much of the world's greatest art. But…

I'm not really Romantic…

In fact when the song came out, I remember RIU the magazine had as a clue in their cryptic crossword "They've stolen our name; we've got the pip"

The best poetry and art generally is done for the sole reason that the artist wanted to do it for itself. The profit motive will always distort the art,

Then surely.... the artist with no money may well already be distorting their art in order to survive, and equally, an…

A poet at some stage has to be poor. And somehow money spoils poetry. It does, it takes away, it changes your original intention. I always become nasty when I have money.

Sad but true, I think. The best poetry and art generally is done for the sole reason that…

Will try and make it for Hustle on Monday, but ironically depends on wether I have band practise :-)

Yay – it's Friday...

Didn't…

Interesting that Little Richard is singing "gonna RIU, gonna ball tonite" since 'ball' was slang of the day for 'f@ck'. No such blatant slang in today's modern music??

Don't be too hard on the kids though, RB. Consider this: Expecting today's…

I brought Murray around to my flat and stuck on Orange Juice's You Can't Hide Your Love Forever album: the one with the wonky version of Al Green's 'L.O.V.E.', and much beloved of John Campbell.

Little did I know that Murray, as a genuine soul fan, loathed the record

Are…

PS: Wellington readers: another remind about the Hustlle for Autism on Monday night, which will launch David Cohen's book, A Perfect World and my new autism website, Humans, and raise money for the Autism Intervention Trust.

Give my regards to David, Russell, and I really look forward to reading the…

Congratulations are due to Brian Opie and all the others involved in the project, which began with a meeting at the National Library exactly a year ago.

The New Zealand Open Source Society would like to second that emotion.

Looks like the best ones are good for only about 10m. (but I'm no expert)