Requiem for Methuselah

I only mentioned desktop-published music scores (which, in the real world, have been produced on composers' home computers for more than 25 years already) because no one thought of it in the 1960s, just as no one realized then that quick and easy typesetting of ordinary text in homes or offices would soon be possible.

 

Uh huh. And yet, I think I'd be inclined to write it down on paper too.

 

You don't live in The Future yet, though, not too deep into it anyway; and your first instinct wouldn't be to go for the quill.

But as said, this is not Flint writing music. This is Brahms writing music. Flint the accomplished composer could write Flint-style music, and probably would do it using his trusted ear implant and fingernail widget, as would be standard for the day. Brahms the historical figure reenacted would use paper and ink for writing music in the Brahms style, because that's the whole point of the exercise.

Timo Saloniemi

 

So...Flint was cos-playing as one of his earlier personas?
In effect, cos-playing as himself????

 

Thought: Wouldn't a composer's style evolve and change over several hundred years?

 

Sure. And we also know that ITRW the handwriting of Johannes Brahms was not identical to the handwriting of Leonardo da Vinci, and nobody in the Trek universe indicates otherwise, so that "evolved", too.

It's not a case of gradual evolution, it's a case of Flint changing his whole style whenever becoming a new person, out of absolute necessity of subterfuge. And he may practice composing in the style of Flint, but separately from that, he still practices composing and handwriting in the style of Johannes Brahms - either in order not to lose the golden touch of his forging skills, or then specifically to keep his "Brahms hand" current just for the heck of it. No doubt he also still paints in the style of Leonardo on occasion, too.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Something plots like this don't realize is that the best way to not be found out as an immortal, is to NOT get famous. Duncan MacLeod got it mostly right.

 

Flint has lived so long and has so much experience he would inevitably do or be or achieve something to become famous.

 

Timo-- As long as Man is around, I think the ease and simplicity and human-ness of just grabbing a piece of paper and writing something down will be favored by some writers, composers and artists, and just people in general. It depends how much you're planning to do, and how advanced the work is. And Flint is very much someone who would resist absorbing new habits automatically, from the culture around him.

 

Go read the much-reprinted story "A Work of Art" (1956) by James Blish, a rather different approach to the same idea. In addition to being exposed (amusingly) to the current musical styles of centuries hence, the main character - the resurrected(?) Richard Strauss - must learn to use, and does learn to use, a device to write music directly as instructions for a synthesizer-equivalent.

 

This sort of presumes that paper and pencils would be at hand, though. If I had to go to the printer to print some blank paper and pencils first, I could just as well compose using my eyephone or brainchip.

Not sure about that. Through sheer experience, he might have learned the advantages of being an early absorber - or even a pathfinder, as the technologies at his fingertips appear to exceed the abilities of his "home culture" by a margin.

OTOH, who knows - perhaps Flint has adopted the ultramodern practice of writing notation on paper through telekinesis, leaving in his dust all the old-fashioned conservatives who still rely on computers?

Timo Saloniemi

 

Just exactly how do you print up some BLANK paper?
Sounds like something my Mother would say.

 

On a 23rd century 3D printer, soon to be replicator!

 

3D printers squirt out raw materials from containers and form them into shapes with little jets. He'd have to have a container onhand of wood pulp or something. Easier just to put away a lot of paper... He must get himself supplied somehow. Unless he has a replicator, which he almost certainly does, even if it's not a popular word in c23...

 

There is a different mental experience with writing on paper using a hand held instrument. Your recording pace is slower and more deliberate. You know that correction is messy, so you think things through more before writing. It affects your creative drive. Not necessarily superior than electronic word processing, but different. I know for myself, I enjoy doing both. I was losing decent penmanship by not writing for very long periods. Now that I'm into fountain pens, my penmanship has definitely improved and I'm very much enjoying the experience. Also, there's nothing quite like complete freehand, not constrained by lines and rigid formatting.

Yes, there is software for composing music, like Sibelius. But writing it out is more gratifying. I can appreciate Flint writing his music by hand.

 

Someone in the arts and/or humanities is going to be different from a techie. Flint is both, so is hard to predict...

 

Yet you have no problem with the concept of printing up some PENCILS?

Thing is, paper no longer is in evidence in Star Trek - we never see it lying around in any form other than precious leather-bound books. Before the proliferation of replicators, there would exist a period where accessing paper would be a real chore, and that period is the TOS one...

Given the staggering size of Flint's real estate, he could well have a paper mill of his very own in the basement, though.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Wait a minute...Early on Spock had a printer built in to his science station. We got to see it used only once. I think he even had to tear it off like it was on a roll.
The comment was meant to be funny. I think the 23rd Century equivalent would be to replicate some paper and pencils. Although the term Kirk would probably say is for the ship's stores (or Quartermaster) to produce the paper and pencils. "Replicate" came to be associated with 24th Century replicators.

 

Fandom spoke of "fabricators" in the TOS context, sometimes referring to an expression from "A Private Little War" (even though Kirk actually commands the "reproduction" of a hundred flintlocks there, another oddly futuristic choice of terminology). No doubt there was a long and continuous line of predecessors to the TNG replicators.

Flint apparently has resources to match (and beat) a starship. I wonder how common such would be in the UFP?

Timo Saloniemi

 

Harlan Ellison still writes using a typewriter, or at least he did as if a few years ago.