Since the election, watching American politics has been a mixture of the hilarious as the right comes to terms with this thing called "reality", and the absurd (also known as "The Fiscal Cliff"). Suffice it to say, rather than add more gas to the fire burning down our country, I thought it best to just sit back and watch it burn.
Now it's the new year, and I can't think of a damn thing I care about enough to write about. I mean, honestly - there are way too many voices, most of them saying the same things, over and over and over again. Why bother?
Thanks to my wife getting me Ken Burns' Jazz on DVD for Christmas, I've returned to some of Ralph Ellison's essays on music. Thanks to an Amazon gift card, I purchased a six-year old documentary on Heavy Metal that is both wonderful and . . . well, the same-old, same old.
My hope for 2013, besides the occasional aside about our silly situation as a country; some thoughts on being a Christian in an age where the name has become contested; and the occasional scolding of those whose posts seem the product of some weird algorithm rather than actual human thought; beyond all that, I would like to find some folks who write intelligently and thoughtfully about hard rock and the various metal genres without reveling in cliches, or falling in to traditional traps. For example, while the documentary does a pretty good job covering all the various genres and touches on such issues as gender, power, sex and sexuality, and even the business end of the issue, there is little to no discussion of the music qua music. The person who produced the documentary, an anthropologist who is a life-long fan of the music, spent just a bit too much time attempting to establish both his own bona fides as well as that of the music.
It would be nice to read some reviews of music and musicians and books on music and musicians that are as intelligent, thoughtful, wise, and (most of all) knowing as Ellison is in his essays.
That's the plan, anyway.
Now it's the new year, and I can't think of a damn thing I care about enough to write about. I mean, honestly - there are way too many voices, most of them saying the same things, over and over and over again. Why bother?
Thanks to my wife getting me Ken Burns' Jazz on DVD for Christmas, I've returned to some of Ralph Ellison's essays on music. Thanks to an Amazon gift card, I purchased a six-year old documentary on Heavy Metal that is both wonderful and . . . well, the same-old, same old.
My hope for 2013, besides the occasional aside about our silly situation as a country; some thoughts on being a Christian in an age where the name has become contested; and the occasional scolding of those whose posts seem the product of some weird algorithm rather than actual human thought; beyond all that, I would like to find some folks who write intelligently and thoughtfully about hard rock and the various metal genres without reveling in cliches, or falling in to traditional traps. For example, while the documentary does a pretty good job covering all the various genres and touches on such issues as gender, power, sex and sexuality, and even the business end of the issue, there is little to no discussion of the music qua music. The person who produced the documentary, an anthropologist who is a life-long fan of the music, spent just a bit too much time attempting to establish both his own bona fides as well as that of the music.
It would be nice to read some reviews of music and musicians and books on music and musicians that are as intelligent, thoughtful, wise, and (most of all) knowing as Ellison is in his essays.
That's the plan, anyway.
