Just as the phrase “what the entire fuck” implies the existence of fractional fucks, the phrase “what the absolute fuck” implies the existence of both positive and negative fucks (or else there would be no need for an absolute value operation). Taken together with the phrase “what the actual fuck” (which implies the existence of imaginary fucks), we may thus conclude that fuckery is isomorphic with the complex field.
Before we had Pantone Color Guide, there was no universally recognized system to identify colors. But there were attempts to make it, and probably the most impressive one came from the artist known only as A. Boogert, who back in 1692 created an impressive piece of literature about mixing colors.
Handwritten in Dutch, the “Traité des couleurs servant à la peinture à l’eau“ was an 800-page long guide on color and paint that was probably the most comprehensive piece on colors at the time. It featured color samples, descriptions and even instructions on how to create certain hues and change the tone by adding one, two, or three parts of water.
Medieval book historian Erik Kwakkel was the one who got the chance to examine the book, and as he translated part of the introduction, he concluded that the color book was intended as an educational guide. Sadly, there’s only a single copy of the book known to exist, so probably only a couple of the privileged few got to be educated by it.
At the same time as these conversations about who worked on music are more visible than ever, our ability to access that information has never been more perilous. Physical copies of albums provided any purchaser with detailed credits; in the age of streaming, such luxuries are not always afforded. There are no immediately available physical versions of ye, for instance, and cost-cutting measures across the music industry mean that even albums that do get distributed physically often do not have the once-standard full booklet of credits. (ye is now available to order on CD and vinyl, with orders shipping “early August.”) The ye credits reported by news sites were partially pulled from Tidal and Spotify, but the information provided there is, clearly, lacking. Still, those services are now basically the public’s last bastion in this regard, and they are simply at the mercy of the record labels, which could one day decide that providing detailed songwriting and production credits is no longer worth their time. (There is also the ASCAP database, but it takes some expertise to navigate and parse, and is also being frequently spoofed by people on Twitter looking to further muddy this conversation for retweets.)
— this is very good; to it I would also add the old-as-music tradition of contributions just going uncredited (and whose contributions go uncredited), as well as the way all this affects biographical criticism
