This week I have learned:
- about the perils of the creative process. We went to see Ben and Imo at the Richmond Orange Tree theatre on Tuesday evening, a play about the relationship between Benjamin Britten and Imogen Holst at the time of his writing of Gloriana, the opera commissioned for the Queen’s coronation celebrations. Periods of anger and angst as the notes simply wouldn’t come, followed by an outpouring of creativity.
What appears to be inactivity is the brain preparing and creating. The output comes in bursts, not a constant flow. - In other news, I’ve got a proposal to write.
- In other, other news, this also got me thinking about ideas of constant flow in software development and how constant flow in human endeavours of creativity and creation simply isn’t how we work. Treat us like machines at your peril.
And treat machines like us doubly so. - It was nice to get some time to sit and chat will colleagues in town this week. Agendaless time is so very important.
- I’m regularly shocked and saddened by how many wonderful and creative freelance people I know who are really struggling to find work at the moment. The economy is barely moving as the economists quibble over percentage points of growth or contraction.
The Orange psychopath isn’t helping. But it feels much more systemic. - I’m continuing to explore how LLMs can support, rather than replace, creativity. The Drum Machine analogy returns – doing things with machines that you wouldn’t or couldn’t do without, rather than just simply replacing human effort.
- Shrinkflation now includes the flattening of Easter eggs
- Some London Buses now come with glass roofs. This is a wonderful thing.
The week in media
Listened
A crop of second-hand albums found in a second-hand record shop on the Norfolk coast – Roxy Music’s Avalon, Heaven 17’s The Luxury Gap and Four Tops’ Reach Out (for obvious reasons as we come closer to the 10th anniversary of that flowchart.
The BBC series about Banksy and the impact of one of his efforts ending up on your wall.
A lovely abridged thriller set on Jura.
Watched
The aforementioned Ben and Imo.
A few more bits of the latest Black Mirror.
The first episode of the Diamond Heist.
Many fragments of the Handmaid’s Tale series as my partner ploughed through the seasons.
Read
The rest of Careless Lives, after which I deleted the Facebook app on my phone.
Started The Big Con by Mariana Mazzucato and Rosie Collington which might turn out to be uncomfortable reading.
Next week:
Proposalling
The week in photos:
mmitII 