GG: The Finishing Touch

["Joseph Podlesnik" <veronese@jerseycape.com>]

If GG's perfectionist attitude toward the written essay is any indication,
we can assume that any musical composition (his radio compositions
included) would have undergone the same endless revision. (Perhaps this is
the dilemma of the "modern" artist. The painters Cezanne and Alberto
Giacometti, for example, were rarely satisfied with anything they produced.
For them, painting was always "process", a work in the making. Any idea of
"finish" certainly must have been tentative or questionable.) I remember
reading something somewhere (the McGreevy book? -- which, I'm sad to say, a
friend never returned to me) that when GG was approached about a
compilation of his writings, he feared he would have to go back and rewrite
nearly all the essays before that could happen. Perhaps he should have
taken his cue from (as he has been the subject of much discussion lately) a
one Herr Schubert and his much touted "Unfinished Symphony".

Joseph
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"Despite my admiration for scientific knowledge, I am not an adherent of 
scientism. For scientism dogmatically asserts the authority of scientific 
knowledge; whereas I do not believe in any authority and have always 
resisted dogmatism; and I continue to resist it, especially in science. I 
am opposed to the thesis that the scientist must believe in his theory. 
As far as I am concerned 'I do not believe in  belief', as E. M. Forster 
says; and I especially do not believe in belief in science. I believe at 
most that belief has a place in ethics, and even here only in a few 
instances. I believe, for example, that objective truth is a value -- that 
is, an ethical value, perhaps the greatest value there is -- and that 
cruelty is the greatest evil."   -- Karl Popper (1982)