Its hard to be captivated by complex harmony when you are perfectly satisfied with I vi IV V. I was a music student and piano improviser, and I spent much of my time finding ebullient and brooding chord progressions. It was a fairly lonely space, but texture took life. It takes somebody very special to capture that essence and take it to market. I feel like Owen Pallett pulled it off in modern times, Vincent Persichetti two generations earlier. Just like Blaise Pascal did with his Ponces, freely integrating the scientific and the spiritual; just like Marcus Aurelius somehow eschewing the concept of legacy, only to outlives billions.

In my younger days, I felt it a dichotomy between self-rewarding and reach. I wanted to choose the former, but ended up with neither.

These days I'm more interested in resonance. It creates excitation and movement across multiple dimensions. It starts in one place and time, and ends up spilling across the rest of your lives and that of others. Maybe you were at a concert, or a church service, or around a campfire when some music struck your 'heart strings'. Something about that sound energy turned your mesh of physiology in a new direction. Maybe when you were driving home you realized something about yourself, and eventually your career took a new path; maybe your love for someone became clear. Whatever happened next, the places you traveled, the things you purchased, the fields you trod upon; all real-world effects started when part of you resonated with some sound energy.

Developers and DevOps and Deep Learning folks face the same kind of choices with their creations each day- do I make code that is marvelous to behold? Do I care what others think of it? Does it compile fast enough for my busy schedule? Does it modify the real world in the ways I intend it to?

I no longer think there is some choice between integrity and commercial success. I think there is a choice to seek, embrace, and amplify sympathetic vibrations - or to allow dissonance to wash over you, finding your own stillness in its torrent. Of course, great artists do both in their own measure.