You know what really pisses on my cheerios?

I hate it when people try to make the following point. "Put 100 monkeys in a room with a typewriter, give them from here until eternity and they'll eventually come up with Shakespeare."  You don't know what you're saying.  To those people, I believe, one young David Gilmour had this to say:

It would be interesting to see exactly what four people could do if just given the equipment, who didn't know anything about it really, and just told them to get on with it and do something.  I think we'd come off better.

This comment was made in 1972, during the filming of a docu-concert detailing the creative Big Bang of progressive rock, when the Les Paul was forced to make room for the amplifiers and synthesizers and cultural alarmists were already mourning the death of rock and roll.  

But we already know how this particular story goes.  Rock and roll never died.  The Saucerful experiments didn't give rise to some awful Frankenstein monster (though they were initially received with popular hostility, see Rolling Stone 26 October 1968); art was not freakishly manufactured in some violent and unstable way.  Nor was the curtain pulled in the Emerald City.  Rather, rare talent met with technological circumstance and Dark Side of the Moon, one of the best selling albums worldwide, was born.

I'm not trying to be a specist or anything, so when I say I hate it when people make the "100 monkeys" comment I'm not saying that they're wrong; I'm sure 100 monkeys and a typewriter given from here until eternity could produce Shakespeare.  I'd still consider it a cause to celebrate when they do.  The part I hate is the attempt to shine a light on Shakespeare and dissect the work into its constituent parts; a monkey, typewriter, time and chance.  What's lost is the moment, in real time and in physical space, of creative inspiration when rare talent meets technological circumstance.  What's lost is what happens in the dark.