Going to this FT entry from Tom E. further led to this one on rockcritics.com. Well worth checking out (I might read them in reverse order); my random comments on both are there. I’m too fuzzled to add much beyond what I’ve said beyond this:
One reason only now clearer to me why I am glad I held back on blogging until a couple of months back was precisely because the novelty is dead. That sounds kinda strange, but I am content to gently work into a larger context and find a home there — in this regard, it parallels my work at the All Music Guide. In this sense being identified (overly identified? no idea, not anymore) with ILXor.com was also part of the process. In the case of the AMG and ILX, further work and recognition resulted without having to seek out some particular individual space, something furthered with MySpace and its own extremely handy role as music promotion tool. And similarly I like the fact that my first major book appearance is in an anthology; while I certainly have made individual book pitches, fiction and nonfiction, and would hope to publish something one day in that way, Marooned was a handy beginning on that front.
I think in all cases this prevents potential feelings of burnout, or at least it did for me. It helps as well that while my main public role is inevitably as a music writer, this blog is not designed as the ONLY role for that, and in fact I use this less as a place to work out ideas for the future than to link to work already done elsewhere. The Radiohead blogs were a one-off and, had they not been a chance to work out and creatively capture autobiography with them, would not have been written. The idea of simply talking about the past albums here in the run-up to the new one’s release would have been tendentious. Meantime, what little I have in terms of any sort of aesthetic central point was in fact summed up in the Marooned piece — this in part was the goal of the essay, to put it to bed.
Instead, the blog is me, or the me I’m willing to share out, via links to other locations I have on the Net as well as what I post here. It is not meant to be a music blog, and frankly I’d be horrified at the prospect if it was only seen as that, though obviously I’m well aware of what my public profile is in general and what it involves, and what I publish 99.9% of the time. It’s meant to be a blog of life and reflections on same, as well as discussions on same as they happen. Energy of discussion in whatever field, meanwhile, is all around me, multiple locations, public and private, rather than simply in a music blogosphere now gone/fractured/somehow lost. I don’t mourn for that — now is by default much more interesting. And this ‘now’ will be a past at some point that I don’t want to mourn either. I’m fine with that! It means that life has continued, as it should.
Better stop here, cause I need to make dinner and then get ready for a birthday get-together…
