Where do you start when you hear everything at once?
This got me thinking of two things I learned from Allen Ginsberg, whom I briefly met 15 years ago after he read and sang to a large group at my alma mater: (1) William Blake’s poems are meant to be sung. Ginsberg performed some of Blake’s “Songs of Innocence and Experience” with a slightly slobbery [...]
I was already more than a little excited when a late-night email from WayneAndWax turned into an excuse to listen more actively to this song: Ne-Yo’s “Miss Independent” seemed to discretely make the case that it was engaged in some important cultural work. My initial impressions of the video for this song by a relative [...]
This image via Slog, the blog of The Stranger, “Seattle’s only newspaper,” which is edited by Dan Savage. Apparently, they will now be dropping the star system from their album reviews. It’s a move in the right direction. Whether in a formal class setting or informal conversation, I’ve always tried to point out that we [...]
I’m gonna skip the “why-I’m-returning-to-the-blog-I-abandoned” post.
My recent post on “Poolboy, Tags, and Labels” developed from thoughts I’d mulled over concerning a (straw-man variety of) music theorist’s tendency to label musical events (think: a sonata’s purported “exposition, development, recapitulation”) without addressing the (to me) more interesting things like, say, process or meaning. I brought something personal–Poolboy, in this case–into the discussion [...]
I’ve recently updated previous posts on Jim Hightower and Union Cab (he’s speaking this Sunday in Madison), Dan Savage (who writes about his mom dying), and the Wisconsin Spring Elections (the lame guy won).
To those of you who got spammed because of me: my apologies. Live and learn. Wayne&Wax forwarded me a spam this morning, which at first glance appeared to come from me. While the scare prompted me to change my passwords to something even more ridiculously complicated, it turns out I was just silly to leave [...]
Part I Home from college at the end of my first year, I was hanging out in my parents’ yard with a small group of close friends who still lived full-time in the town where I grew up. I’d just come outside after a long shower. Fumbling for a cigarette, I asked Nat for a [...]
Tangents for the Chasing
