the ryPod

Music criticism is a crock of shit. Like I told my arch-nemesis at CMJ last year, I have a low tolerance for anyone writing about music. Art, literature, theater, movies - these are all worthy subjects. While obviously open to interpretation, the symbols these arts contain hold a semblance of objective meaning. Words and pictures are necessarily representations, of ideas and objects. A picture of a girl can be a million different things to a million different people, but it's still a picture of a girl. Go ahead and have an opinion; write about the girl, what she's doing, the way she looks and makes you feel. But please, leave my music alone.

Because it is my music, and no one else's. Every note I hear belongs to me, to the way I hear it, that specific soundtrack for roadtrips and dancing and the first time I kissed her. Music is wholly subjective. It does not represent or stand for anything else; music simply is. There is no loss, no gap between the representation and the thing itself. As Walter Pater famously said, "All art aspires to the condition of music."

That being said, this is not a music blog. I'm not going to review tracks or spoonfeed anyone my "enlightened opinions" a la Pitchfork. I'm going to write about the people and things I love, and give you free music that I can't live without. You've probably heard these songs before, and that's one reason we're friends. But if you haven't, you really should.

And that's why I'm here.

This entry was posted on 8.27.2005 at 11:31 AM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.