Putting the I in Music

Rock & roll is the thing I love most after human beings, and words are a close third. But almost every time I follow this chain of logic to its obvious conclusion and try to read music criticism, I end up feeling like there might be something kind of wrong with me. Like maybe I am… a little… slow. Because I don’t understand why the one thing I want to read most is also the very thing that’s hardest to find. Where is the pounding heart? Where are the trembling guts? Where are the people lying alone in the dark at a particularly godforsaken hour of their lives, unable to face anything but this one album? Where are the starry moments when the people they love and the song that’s playing and the marvelous, twisted beauty of the world perfectly conspire to break and then heal their hearts? In short, where is the listening human? I want her, I want him, I want them so bad. They’re welcome in fiction and memoir of the musically obsessed variety, but in music criticism they’re the weird, embarrassing step-cousins who everyone is desperately trying to ignore. I feel like there must be something I don’t know, because they’re the only people I actually want to talk to at this whole party.

I do know this: easier said than done, old friend. Lamenting is a walk in the park; it’s creating that’s hard. Rather than criticizing music criticism, I ought to be attempting to write the kind of thing I want to read. So.

This is the blog of a single mom in Portland, Oregon who has more to say about music than she can possibly jam into the few uninterrupted adult conversations she is able to have. I write about music and myself together, in the hope of reaching out to other listeners and writers like me who also long for the listening human, so that we may come together and celebrate our common rock humanity. Praise chords!

I also post about related subjects (making music rather than listening to it, books and movies and art that I inevitably relate back to music), use this blog to share songs and other creative projects, and intend to occasionally get off my lazy buns and make a podcast. I don’t have amazing photographs, fashion sense, or a crafty bone in my body, but I have rock, words, and love. Get some!