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 [...]
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 [...]
Tangents for the Chasing
