I have been listening to the album PetroDragonic Apocalypse; or, Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation, still, as I have been for months now.

fantastic album, can’t recommend it enough.

it took me a number of listen-throughs to figure out what I like about it (aside from the sound, because duh), and the other day I finally realized what makes the composition of the music so…complete: every moment is given time to fully blossom. nothing is rushed; each sound is allowed to reach its completeness before moving to the next. Because of this, some of the songs are 8 minutes, even 9 minutes long. but it doesn’t feel like that, because everything about the sound flows together so fluidly.

this is similar to what Rick Rubin talks about when he says that art should be in service to the idea, or something like that. he generally speaks about the importance of doing something in service to the art, making sure you complete the process so that the piece can be as good as it can be. this often requires a large degree of patience in the creative process.

this is also similar to what Stephen Wolfram has dubbed “computational irreducibility”. sometimes the only way to know something is to go through the process. there is no calculable, mathematical shortcut you can take. the process is as simple as it can be, and you just have to do it.

finally, we get to the point of all this. I tell people all the time, “patience is the hardest part of any strategy.” just like King Gizzard and Rick Rubin and Stephen Wolfram fundamentally incorporating patience into their process, so should you, dear reader, incorporate patience into your actions. “move fast and break things” is actually really bad advice for most people, because they move too fast and break too much and never learn anything in the process.

some things cannot be forced, you simply have to wait for them to bloom. next time you’re thinking about rushing something, or cutting a corner, just remember that you’re doing a disservice to the final product; you’re cheating yourself and everyone who partakes in the process. your final product in doing this may be passable for the masses, and maybe that’s good enough for some who want to live in a mediocre world.

I personally do not. so I will keep being patient.