In Response
This is from DQ VB.Net Advisor Garret Remple, in response to the post about Scott Miller last week:Chris writes:
"Hearing him fumble for the right chords, I realized that he didn’t use the math part of his brain to write songs at all, but rather wrote songs the same way as every other musician I knew of, with that un-analytical/more creative part of his mind. That was a shocker--that a person so gifted at an empirical undertaking like math was also somehow skilled at artistic creation...well, that sort of thing doesn’t occur often in humans, I don’t think."
Chris makes a mistake in his conclusion that, as he puts it, an empirical undertaking like mathematics, is not creative. That mathematics and artistic creation reside in different parts of the brain.
Nothing is further from the truth; in fact mathematics is intensely creative. It is an art form all by itself in that crafting formulas and taking simple structures and crafting a solution to a difficult problem is a creative process very similar to music composition. It takes fumbling, trial and error, and work until the pieces drop into place to build something of beauty.
I hadn't thought about that, but it's a good point. When I'm trying to create something, be it writing or code or whatever, I have exactly the same feeling when things are going well. It's different when they're not, but when everything is synchronized, it's almost identical.
By the way, I'm trying very hard to convince Chris to start a semi-regular feature on music for DQ. He has a comprehensive and tremendously interesting knowledge of music, and I know you guys would enjoy reading more from him.
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