Welcome!

The Immaculate Conception, by Max Ernst. I don't know what year it was done, but it seems very 1920's. I like this one because strange hybrid musical machines have often haunted my dreams (though not often with comely naked ladies.) Surrealism expresses states of mind that can be acutely felt, but never rationally described. That's a pretty apt description of my own consciousness.




I have blogged before, as a music writer and critic in the now defunct Muse at Sunset, a cultural critic in the previous Anagoge blog, and currently for my students at Antanagoge. Since I have some experience, I know how to keep the blog up without either stressing out or slacking off into apathy. I also know to limit comments, ignore trolls, and delete spam.




I had different purposes for my other blogs, but this reborn one will be for and about music. I will sometimes mention other things if they are important, but many things that once seemed important to me, no longer are. There isn't any reason to go on and on about my personal life or fixations, or indeed anything that would hardly justify writing in a public forum. Onanistic self regard is a common excess of artists in general, and of our present era more particularly. As I often say (only half jokingly) I try hard to maintain an aura of dignity, since my personal store of that particular virtue is rather depleted.




The only things I may have to say of any value to random others, concern Music, my obsession, my profession, my worship and my sin. As I grow more frustrated and apathetic by turns about the world around me, I find that I cling to Music all the more strongly, as a thing which, in itself, can never be corrupted- merely debased. A combination of abstract sounds, void of language or superficial cultural associations, cannot be evil, as the ancients believed. We humans can make such associations and impose ourselves, in our ignorance, on the art, but the music itself always stands outside these things and separate from them.




Music may be the last aspect of life that I no longer view with a cynical skepticism. It is also the only big thing that I know I truly understand. A lifetime of creating, performing, teaching and investigating music has brought me to the place that I feel the only limitations I have are my own energy and labor. Since that is where the rubber meets the road, and I now have so much less energy for such work, I intend to choose very carefully how, and for what, I want to expend myself.




This blog will be deliberately free from politics, religion, or cultural strife of any kind. I am too tired, and too impatient, to go waltzing back down the fool's alley rehashing the same old bullshit. I can make another blog for such things if I want to. My opinions on music you can take or leave, but what I say will have my own life experience behind it. You may disagree, and comment elsewhere if you like, but I promise you no crap.




Today I will sign out with Palestrina's Sicut Cervus, a gem from the golden age of vocal polyphony.