The job for which the architect is employed is chiefly a matter between him or her and the client. The main work the architect does is design the course. The business of the player or analyst or rater is to see as much about the course as he or she can, and enjoy it as fully as temperament and skill permit. The architect's business ends, as is true of the composer or sculptor or poet, when the course is put into play and on display. He doesn't have to discuss it if he chooses not to. Many artists prefer to let the work speak for itself, understanding very well that what the course means to them, or what they meant to accomplish in designing the course, may not always be understood very well by those who've no experience and not tried to design a course themselves. The poet Robert Frost, when asked to explain what his poem meant, would kindly, sometimes, reply, "Read the poem and find out yourself what it means." He meant, basically, I just finished my work, I don't know what the result will be -- the meaning you'll find -- when you, a more or less acute and interested reader finishes yours.
That kind of reply often irritated and offended readers, who really believed that what the work meant for the creator of it could be articulated in a fully comprehensible, if not comprehensive, manner. That Frost didn't even try frosted some readers mightily. How many of his readers, he probably calculated over the years of being confronted by his reply, would really get it, or believe he meant it, or accept it even when he tried to share with them!
That Tom (and others of his peers here) so regularly, courteously, sometimes quite comprehensively offer to discuss their own works and the creative processes that led to them, is extremely generous. Sometimes, I even think, a bit foolhardy, as there is a good bit about the creative process that is unconscious and occurs beneath the level of verbal analysis. Some poets, and Frost is among them, refuse to analyze what occurs unconsciously, precisely out of fear that subjecting such processes to analysis could thwart or subvert their natural operation. Too much talk about and analysis of creativity can kill it.
I'm particularly grateful for hearing the architects discuss their own works; when they choose to do it, it's a great gift to us who really care to know more and better than what our own limited experiences have given us. That the architect should speak in his own distinctive style is to be desired; his creative spirit is made known in his words and tone, just as his spirit is expressed in the architectural vocabulary in his course's design. We are not obliged to like the artist's personality any more than we are obliged to like his work. But if we allow a person's style to get in the way of our understanding the substance of what he does, we are cutting ourselves off from the best fountain of information so rarely available to us. That loss is on us, not the artist.
So keep on posting here, Tom. I expect most of us benefit from the heat and the light you shine on this board.