The Rules Of The Game #1: Joining In

[koganbot]

Hurrah, I've been given a column (first one here: The Rules Of The Game #1: Joining In) at the Las Vegas Weekly website, where I can actually get paid to write stuff I've always wanted to write - to ask questions, basically, and to intellectualize to my heart's content. The column runs every Thursday* with a brief minicolumn update on Mondays. I welcome your commentary: in fact, will need it, since my hope for the Monday minicolumns is that at least some of them will have me addressing people's comments about the previous Thursday's column.

*The especially sharp-eyed among you will notice that today is Friday, not Thursday. The Las Vegas Weekly is revamping its website and going through something of a shakedown cruise, so things don't always go up in a timely fashion. Some future Thursdays may also end up as Fridays, and some Mondays will be Tuesdays.

EDIT: Here are links to all but three of my other Rules Of The Game columns (LVW's search results for "Rules of the Game"). Links for the other three (which for some reason didn't get "Rules Of The Game" in their titles), are here: #4, #5, and #8.

UPDATE: I've got all the links here now:

http://koganbot.livejournal.com/179531.html

Comments

TWICE MORE WITH FEELING

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

in my buffy musical piece a few years back, i said this: "Even when it's just a kid posing with a tennis racket in a mirror, all music is an intuitive declaration about the state of community, what works, what doesn't, what we—which may or may not include the audience—will transform, with our belief in each other and what it is we do together."

and i guess these are the elements in this question which particularly interest me:
A. the private space considered as a proto-community or imagined community (a private space which i think only evolves distinct with the advent of recorded music; certainly before it you had already to be musically trained -- or possibly royalty -- to experience music when alone)
B. our travels through or between communities -- between when we're grown-up but experience or enjoy (or resist) music in different contexts with different groups; through as part of our life's journey, where the gang we hang with aged 16 is going to be into different music compared to the gang we hang with aged 10 (i have a sort of grand unified theory abt the TYPES of pop we pass through in age terms, which freaktigger calls my SEVEN AGES OF POP MAN theory; how the music we (as a gang) like aged 12 is partly about rejecting the music we liked aged 8, when we were "just little kids"... and how this dynamic (of feeling we're "outgrowing an earlier silly self) continues UNTIL WE DIE er till comfy middle-age at least

anyway, the thing i'm particularly interested in is how Community A (the "community of one") may function as a kind of Wood Between the Worlds (Narnia reference which I'll expain if need be...) that helps us move between all the Community Bs (it's a space of psychic shelter and preparation and reflection and -- as noted in the buffy piece -- of posing and practicing and tryign stuff out and sadly or excitedly dreaming) (it also helps us -- as we get older -- gird our loins to negotiate terms with the Opinion Leaders, who are often the Designated Deciders of what gets to be a proper element in the "discussion"; in some contexts Opinion Leaders are folks like me, professional commentators, but in others they're event organisers or scene enablers, or just the beloved vivid life-and-soul-of-the-party who everyone's there to gather round viz me again!!)

[HEADING = I'm going to post a shorter version of this on the slowpoke official thread, if they'll let me]