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i consider myself an artist; art is not my day job, but i make music and when i do so...
i just paid HK$9 for a diet coke, or about US$1.15.
nobody writes personal blogs anymore.
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September 30, 2026 at 10:28
i consider myself an artist; art is not my day job, but i make music and when i do so i do it for the sake of art. i’ve played instruments, composed music, designed sounds and experimented with music for twenty years and in that time i’ve come to understand how to make sounds that make me feel a certain way.
i think when people say something “is not art” they are actually trying to disparage its quality. the hidden claim is that if something is not good enough, then it is not art. putting that claim aside, i think this concept of “quality” of art is not well defined by the people making this claim.
the most measurable definition of artistic quality might be something like popularity, but this falls at the zeroth hurdle; while i have the utmost respect for pop artists, i don’t think the charts represents the highest of artistic output of the human race.
something less controversial might be the endurance of a piece of art. bach’s concertos could be thought of as higher quality than his peers because his outlasted theirs in the cultural conversation.
judging art by how society at large receives it means we might miss out on some incredible art that was just never shared with the public, or art that was overlooked for other reasons. maybe there was a woman who composed “better” sonatas than mozart, overlooked for the crime of being a woman.
something people say a lot about art is that it should make you feel something. this is much harder to measure, because different people react differently to each piece. which is more important: to make a few people feel strongly, or many people feel weakly?
i also write. i’m far less experienced at writing. why is it that my writing is “worse” than my music? it’s probably true that at least one person in the world would prefer my writing to my music.
i think the key difference between my writing and my music is my ability to put an intent into the art. when i make music i can convey a feeling, i can tell a story, or i can just make a groove. on a more micro level, i can make each individual beat sound like the song i have in my head, and on a macro level i can put multiple songs together to form a cohesive album with a single concept behind it.
when i write, i may struggle to pace a chapter. i might use words that are correct, but not precise. my sentences may run too long for the flow of the scene i’m imagining. and on a higher level, i might not even have an intent to put into words. there’s a story in my mind but i don’t have a strong desire for “how this chapter should feel” because i’m not experienced enough to know the choices i could make.
the artist must have a goal, and that goal must be related to the art and not its reception. the goal must be achievable even if the piece remained totally unshared with the world.
i consider myself an artist; art is not my day job, but i make music and when i do so i do it for the sake of art. i’ve played instruments, composed music, designed sounds and experimented with music for twenty years and in that time i’ve come to understand how to make sounds that make me feel a certain way.
i think when people say something “is not art” they are actually trying to disparage its quality. the hidden claim is that if something is not good enough, then it is not art. putting that claim aside, i think this concept of “quality” of art is not well defined by the people making this claim.
the most measurable definition of artistic quality might be something like popularity, but this falls at the zeroth hurdle; while i have the utmost respect for pop artists, i don’t think the charts represents the highest of artistic output of the human race.
something less controversial might be the endurance of a piece of art. bach’s concertos could be thought of as higher quality than his peers because his outlasted theirs in the cultural conversation.
judging art by how society at large receives it means we might miss out on some incredible art that was just never shared with the public, or art that was overlooked for other reasons. maybe there was a woman who composed “better” sonatas than mozart, overlooked for the crime of being a woman.
something people say a lot about art is that it should make you feel something. this is much harder to measure, because different people react differently to each piece. which is more important: to make a few people feel strongly, or many people feel weakly?
i also write. i’m far less experienced at writing. why is it that my writing is “worse” than my music? it’s probably true that at least one person in the world would prefer my writing to my music.
i think the key difference between my writing and my music is my ability to put an intent into the art. when i make music i can convey a feeling, i can tell a story, or i can just make a groove. on a more micro level, i can make each individual beat sound like the song i have in my head, and on a macro level i can put multiple songs together to form a cohesive album with a single concept behind it.
when i write, i may struggle to pace a chapter. i might use words that are correct, but not precise. my sentences may run too long for the flow of the scene i’m imagining. and on a higher level, i might not even have an intent to put into words. there’s a story in my mind but i don’t have a strong desire for “how this chapter should feel” because i’m not experienced enough to know the choices i could make.
the artist must have a goal, and that goal must be related to the art and not its reception. the goal must be achievable even if the piece remained totally unshared with the world.
i just paid HK$9 for a diet coke, or about US$1.15. i actually think it was a “coca cola light”, which is how diet coke is branded in parts of asia. to those of us on western incomes, in developed countries, that price is pretty close to zero; buying one daily comes to less than a percent of your income. there aren’t many things you can buy that are much cheaper.
diet coke has zero calories. it contains no sugar, no fat, no protein, and has all but zero nutritional value. it contains caffeine in small enough doses that you typically don’t have to think about what time of day you drink it. the only downside to drinking it that i can think of is that the phosphoric acid is bad for your teeth.
what is the upside? there’s the caffeine, but as previously mentioned it’s a small dose, and there are more effective media for caffeine intake.
diet coke reminds me of vaping (of which i am 2 months clean, as of writing). it’s roughly free in the biological sense: none of the cancer risk associated with tobacco. there is also very little upside to vaping; after a short period of using nicotine, tolerance vastly blunts any of the actual effects. diet coke at least does not have the withdrawals nicotine does.
as a child, i remember only rarely drinking full sugar coke, and as an adult i do not like it. full sugar sodas have a somewhat astringent texture. coke zero, which attempts to replicate standard coke more closely than diet coke, avoids this, but is still too sweet.
when at a restaurant fancy enough to ask me “still or sparkling”, i will often choose sparkling purely for the novelty. but sparkling water on its own can taste slightly sour, because there is nothing to balance the carbonic acid.
since moving to hong kong, i’ve found a drink here called “coke plus”. i’ve tried it a few times, because diet coke is less common here and coke plus tastes pretty similar. i looked into it and coke plus is a similar formulation, but has 5 grams of dietary fibre. isn’t that wild? it’s not just “not bad for you” but now actively good for you.
nobody writes personal blogs anymore.
the friction associated with setting up a personal blog is far lower than it would have been in 2006 - commercial offerings, free platforms, or AI to build it for us. but it feels greater than ever because frictionless alternatives now exist; setting up a twitter takes seconds and the twitter algorithm is a free, built-in way to get your first readers.
in 2006 you paid with effort to set up a blog. in 2026 you pay in aesthetic.
to me, this is gradient descent towards a local minimum, and i think we are stuck here. the world we have built is convenient, not aesthetic. LEDs are more convenient than neon signs, but the loss of Hong Kong’s neon should upset the world. personal blogs are the neon signs of Hong Kong.
the feeling of stumbling across an old personal blog is incredible. reading articles written in 2006 on a website abandoned since 2014, pages of content with the small “0 comments” tag. seeing an abandoned twitter with no replies is just the norm. the effort of setting up a blog is what makes its abandonment sad.
so here we are. it’s not the same to start a personal blog in 2026; the writers of 2006 did not know what the internet would become. but i hope by enduring the friction ($12/year for a domain and the effort of maintaining a jekyll site on github pages) somebody might stumble across this in many years and get the same feeling i get. consider it me putting up my own neon sign, even if it’s more work than a cheap LED.