A healthy discount led me to go ahead and grab Thorn.Audio Splines without waiting for Budapeszt first.
Budapeszt should be shipping soon, hopefully, since Xaoc announced on Oct 1 that it had entered production. I’ll definitely pick that up when the time comes.
I’ve decided for sure to set aside Spectraphon, as well as Nibbler and Katowice; possibly Rings if I feel Budapeszt entirely replaces it. That gives me plenty of space to look at later, once I’ve explored the two new ones. I do want a button controller with momentary and latched outputs, and am intrigued by a couple of other modulation sources, but we’ll just see.
Last weekend the weather was actually appropriate for a Midwestern mid-October, and we took the opportunity to visit the St Louis Renaissance Festival (which is a ways west of the St. Louis metro area) for the first time in several years. It wasn’t super crowded in the morning, but was by lunchtime. We still got to hit up all the merchant booths we were interested in, bought a few nifty things (I have a new Spirit of Scotland tartan hat, because its colors suit me), watched a couple of performances, and checked out the coolest petting zoo I have seen in a while — it had an albino wallaby and several raptors. Also it was just a generally pleasant outing and we got to move around and be outside for a while.
Temperatures have been climbing back up, and may reach 80 on Sunday, but evenings and mornings have been cooler and there’s less humidity, so it’s not bad. It’s almost Halloween though and we should consistently have nice hoodie weather.
I’ve started reading Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear. Saw it recommended somewhere, and it was recently on sale. If I’d realized it was by the author of Eat Pray Love I probably would have dismissed it, but I am glad I didn’t. (And examining why that title makes me averse when I honestly don’t know anything about that book.) Anyway, this one has some excellent words of wisdom, and funny stories about the magical weirdness as well as the everyday effort and seemingly-uncomfortable-but-not-really truths of the creative process.
In a sense, it’s preaching to the choir though. I agree with pretty much everything she says: that people should pursue their creative interests, not set out to make a career out of it, not build up any expectation of success other than “make things”, do their own thing and ignore doubts and critics and popularity, put in the actual work, that perfectionism is a kind of self-doubt/block, etc.
I would add that creativity is like a lottery: you can’t win if you don’t buy tickets, and you probably won’t win anyway but the more you buy the better your chances — and by “buy tickets” I mean “make things,” and what it means to “win” can only be defined by yourself. My expenses are considerably more than my income (partly just because I like the stuff) and I have a limited set of fans, but I still feel like I’m winning because I’m making music that I like to listen to myself and having great fun doing it.