Blah

[koganbot]

It's midnight and I have a headache. Yesterday I was engrossed in reading the Lyrix thread over in poptimists and wanted to post at length about Ashlee complicated vs. Ashlee uncomplicated (former is better), "Love Makes The World Go 'Round" vs. "Coming Back For More," but knew I was at my last chance to take a walk before the day got unbearably hot, so I hotfooted it out the door but kept stopping to excitedly write in my pocket notebook. ("All this static - haze - swarm of gnats. 'I just want to talk to you/My broken heart it has no use.' But call to silence: 'Promises better left unsaid.' Relationship = haze of static. But, at the end, she's coming back for more! (End will switch places like an O. Henry story.) Teen tragedy lyrics.")

Then I got home, listened for the first time to "Blush," the beautiful song that was on the promo for Aly & A.J.'s Insomniatic but was dropped from the official release: already knew what was coming from the discussion on the rolling teenpop thread, and the lyrics right off lay out all the issues, almost torturous in their explanations ("Even though I like your honesty/It won't lead me to your bed/So go ahead and say it/Even though you know it makes me uncomfortable/Go ahead and say it/If you must make me blush"), yet when she gets to the last line of the song - an obvious one, summing up what she was saying in the entire song, but I won't tell you it because... well, poignancy, it whomped me and I want it to whomp you, all of a sudden tears are in my eyes, I'm up on my feet in the other room and pacing back and forth. An explosion of feeling from I'm not sure where or why (see this classic Mark Sinker ilX thread), and... what to do with it? Well, I'm a writer, so what to do with it is write it, obviously, and there's a Lyrix thread waiting for it and...

Fucking livejournal. I sit down and realize that Britain's already gone home and maybe even gone to bed and will never look at that comment thread again, so I'd be only writing for a handful of American poptimists at most. So, um, maybe could make it a Song Of The Day over on my MySpace (which I suppose will happen), but somehow I've lost my voice there, or never quite found my way into one, and after taking a vacation from Song Of The Day during my vacation I'm not sure where I am with that feature.

Several hours later it dawned on me that I could write on the teenpop thread, but... well, this is astonishing, that it took me several hours to think of the teenpop thread, when six months ago I'd have headed there instantly. What happened? Well, ilX went sour, but that's been happening for a good long time, and the teenpop thread is its own world pretty much separate from ilX. But not from the eyes of ilX, and I hate to say it, but the fact that Shipley and Enrique and all those other scumbags were sliming us has finally gotten to me; the impetus, the joy just isn't there anymore. And maybe my problem isn't just that the joy has left the rolling teenpop thread (though there's no way it could have the excitement of discovery for me that it had last year, when I eagerly taking in five overlooked years of the genre and trying to figure it all out), but there are now so many other places I go to first, before ilX (almost never look at the New Answers pages), my emotion is engaged elsewhere...

An unexpected event, back in 2005 - Sunday, 18 December 2005, to be exact - on Rolling 2005 Country Thread: gut instinct takes over, and I simply decide that my year-end preliminary Pazz & Jop musings will go there, on the country thread, even though that means I'm suddenly talking about Lindsay Lohan and t.A.T.u. and Madonna and Kelly Clarkson and Shakira and the Rolling Stones and the Hold Steady. My motive was quite simple. I knew - I KNEW - that my words would sing there, ont that thread, and that my words wouldn't sing as well at another venue, on another thread or board. And I knew the words I'd get back from others would be twice as smart and twice as alive as the words I'd see elsewhere. So, more to the point, I felt my words couldn't sing in other places.

But here's my problem now: My voice suddenly feels homeless. I was hoping my original idea for the Las Vegas Weekly column - a main column, online, with a followup a few days later, also online - would create an ease of conversation. Low profile but with a lot of back and forth. Now that it's down to once a week, in print as well as online, but with no followup, I'm finding my diction goes overformal, and I seem not to be able to stop this from happening. And I'm now confused as to where to turn for my subject matter. There are hundreds of good directions, but I'm not feeling my way into them. The first ten columns (weeks 1 through 7) had a direction, each building on the last. Now I'm confused.

Comments

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Won't write more so as not to give away the ending, but "Blush" is one of my absolute favorites. Also like, in its own way, "Careful with Words," another track not included on all versions of the album (my version had "Blush" as a regular track, which seriously influences my placement of it in my mind. Also brings it closer to on par with the best stuff on the first one).

Anyway, as I said in one of my columns, it's not just you. It's the music, it's the people, it's the vibe. I didn't even start posting on rolling teenpop until a few months into the year (was still somewhat intimidated by ILM, still am) and even though I post there regularly, I'm not getting quite the rush I was from those first few months' worth (and remainder of the year I was posting), but then I'm not getting the same sparks from other threads, either. The convos have gotten longer on Bedbugs threads, but there's something weirdly stagnant about a lot of them...I feel like my own ideas are a little hemmed-in and the conversations aren't going as far out. (And like you and the onlookers, I've gotten stupidly self-conscious of Reynoldsians chin-stroking at my posts without leaving a single comment...someone asked me if I got the "cure for bedbugs" phrase from Brecht, and I had to inform him that it was, in fact, from the original bedbugs.)

The nature of a weekly column means that discernible directions will probably come in fits and starts, more like a series of bundled insights in streaks, with the occasional odd post. In X-Files parlance (we've been watching them a lot lately), the odd ones are called "Monster of the Week" episodes, which are usually great in their own right and can add to character development in unexpected ways (as Mark said about your latest one) even if it doesn't fit into a clean arc. You'll drive yourself crazy trying to essentially write a cogent book of theory once a week every week for the foreseeable future. But even the one-off essays will be in the general vicinity of where you're headed.

I also think that where you're headed is maybe a little less clear -- you made the bold first couple of Wittgensteinian points (even started things off with children learning to play simple games to demonstrate music as social interaction) and now get into murkier territory by point 11 (or maybe you've reached the end of a set of sub-points and need to back up in the outline, go from 3e to 4a). But the conversations about class are important and you haven't even brought in your post-Real Punks cast of characters at all yet, aside from Britney and Paris (for a follow-up that was more about Vietnam than Paris).

Final thing, I go to LiveJournal first these days for conversations and check Poptimists and my friends list, which isn't something I would have even thought about this time last year, as I was still resisting LJ with inexplicable vehemence.

[mooxyjoo.livejournal.com]

one reason diction becomes more formal is to pre-empt criticism and prevent imagined misunderstandings. which people (it may not be a single person or a single kind of person) do you think you're over-anticipating when you sit down to write? are they actually reading? even if they are, do you care if you leave them an opening to criticize what you say (at that time) or if they don't understand everything you say (at that time)?

[koganbot]

So this is the version I posted on my MySpace:

let's just end with the song of the day for July 29, 2007, Aly & A.J.'s "Blush," a beautiful song that was on the promo for Insomniatic but wasn't on the version streamed at MTV.com, so I'm guessing it was deleted from the official release, though there are versions floating around with it, so I can't say for sure. I already knew what the song was about from the discussion on the rolling teenpop thread, and the lyrics right off lay out all the issues, almost tortuous in their explanations ("Even though I like your honesty/It won't lead me to your bed/So go ahead and say it/Even though you know it makes me uncomfortable/Go ahead and say it/If you must make me blush"), yet when she gets to the last line of the song - an obvious one, summing up what she was getting at in the entire song, all she does is insert one extra word, but I won't tell you it because... well, poignancy, it whomped me, all of a sudden tears are in my eyes, I'm up on my feet in the other room and pacing back and forth. An explosion of feeling from I'm not sure where or why, and I won't give it away, on the off chance it'll whomp you too. What got me is that up 'til then the song is all explanatory: she's explaining that she finds his straightforward desire appealing, she's explaining that she wants to be the recipient, within boundaries, and she's explaining and reexplaining, setting rules - asserting control, I'd say, all this word work as opposed the rest of the album's wordplay - and then and only then, within the framework she's laboriously set, can she...

Might as well post it on rolling teenpop too.

Hola mardena

[(Anonymous)]

Hola mardena!
falikotrepat

Re: Hola mardena

[koganbot]

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pep talk

[speakerstress.livejournal.com]

I'm all lost in this blog/thread world and whenever I dip into it even a little I feel as though I'm ab to fall through the rabbit hole-- and, sorry, I don't have time for Wonderland when I have so much work to do back in Widgettown. For instance, I like Simon Reynolds books and have no idea why you guys are turning this rockist/popist wanking into such bitter contentiousness. But I can relate a little to the quandary over your writing and voice like this. There is rhythm to conversation, a comfort zone, a place where you feel pushed or challenged and still safe enough to take risks, to let your voice sing and dance. Too little challenge or safety and you lose your rhythm and the dance. I never found it in writing and always ended feeling stiff, isolated, disconnected from my audience. But I've found that rhythm in my voice in places and at times elsewhere in my life and still know times aplenty when I feel disconnected from my audience. You singing and dancing often in your writing and shouldn't despair b/c you lose the beat for a moment. Go for a walk, yeah. Talk to somebody else-- somebody you don't want to or don't usually talk to. Not every column has to be a "Hero Story." In fact, that'd be a bit withering, don't you think? Nothing wrong with the field work-- sound of social commitments, Ashlee, etc-- it adds texture to your narrative. This column is a good thing, Frank, trust me. Now get back in there and play ball.

Re: pep talk

[koganbot]

Many thanks!