The art of fielding one

Reading a book of this name this morning, I was struck by the observation which I now share.

To the effect, that when one is a division one baseball player, one is paid to do the business - in this case, catching a fast moving, hard ball at close range - a hundred times out of a hundred, game after game. Artistry comes a very poor second to reliability. Unlike writers who were allowed the use of the waste basket.

Which lead me off on the trail of classification. Which callings are in the reliable bin and which are in the arty bin?

To some extent, original artists, like painters, as opposed to artists who perform the work of others, like pianists, are in the arty bin. They can work away, producing work after work, but only allowing those out into the outside world which they think are worthy. The rest go into the incinerator - more reliable these days, when you can't be too sure who is riffling though your waste basket when you're not looking. Is it the chap from Murdoch's Newscorp? Or is it some PhD student from some important university from the mid west of the USA?

But not altogether, as some writers, for example columnists for newspapers, have to perform more or less to order. OK, they are allowed a bit of waste basket, but they do have to knock out their sixty six square inches of copy, every day, 2300 sharp.

The existence of the waste basket was one of the things which attracted me to computer programming, being a fairly accident prone person. One can beaver away at a computer program until it is right, chucking away hundreds of mistakes along the way. And when it is right, it performs right every time, it is very reliable. It might even be artistic if you have a flair for it. Although, I should allow that while one chucks away mistakes, it is just as hard to chuck away chunks of code as it is to chuck away chunks of writing. One gets far too attached to the stuff which, after all, is only pouring out of the sub-conscious. It is not as if the real you had all that much to do with it.

Once again, clearly time for breakfast.