Although I have maintained a blog, and sometimes two, for over ten years now, I do not know that I can still consider myself a blogger.
A proper blogger, after all, may be recognized by the production of posts on a frequent, or at least regular, basis.
While my dear old fool in the forest blog sports roughly 1200 posts altogether, only ten of them have been produced in this calendar year. My legal blog, Declarations and Exclusions, is more or less officially dead, and has been for several years (other than to raise its head occasionally to mourn its own demise and the reduced state of legal blogging generally).
And yet, there is the urge to kick myself back into action. Hence, this semi-autonomous new outlet, intended to bring some surprise and refreshment in the hope of rekindling the old bloggy flame.
Although nominally a culture blog, a fool in the forest has focused almost entirely on musical subjects in recent years. This space will focus entirely on such stuff, initially cross-posting back to the foolblog.
Beyond the reports and reviews that have made up the bulk of posts in recent years, I am setting a challenge to myself to write at least a few more abstruse pieces, taking up perennial headscratchers such as
- How do we (or how do I) listen to music?
- What do we talk about when we talk about style or genre or try to slot music into inflexible categories? Can it be done? Is there, more importantly, any purpose to be served in trying to do it? [You may well already guess my inclinations on some aspects of this.]
- Is [insert musical category] dead, or dying, and what does that even mean and if it is dead, or dying, or whatever, is that a cause for alarm, or what?
- How is it possible to write about music? How can it best be described or thought about or explained? And what are the mechanics of the marriage of music and text? As a self-styled "freelance librettist", that last particularly intrigues me.
- Why should you be listening to [this new thing that has set my enthusiasm to bubbling]?
- And so on.
For the most part, I will likely produce more of the same: the ramblings of an enthusiastic amateur, one whose substantive and technical knowledge incorporates more holes than a macramé sweater vest, but also one who wants to know more about what he doesn't know, wants to know what's new, wants to know what he likes, and is particularly interested in figuring out why he likes it. And why the reader should, as well.
As for this blog's name, it is a play on the title of an old (1974) David Bowie tune that was never included in a proper album but which has recurred, in multiple versions and mixes, on Best Ofs and as a bonus track for decades. A crafty bender of gender and genre himself, Mr. Bowie seems an appropriate Jean Genius Loci for this venture.
And now, music....