The Unexpected Guest

As I continue to explore the connections between blogging and arts criticism, I often find that those who have the most to say (at least the most to say in a way I find meaningful) have nothing to do with my field. Peter Kramer--writer, psychiatrist, thinker, blogger--whose work I have referenced on my personal blog, Going40, begins his latest post with these words about blogging:

An unscripted appearance on a radio show always leaves me a bit shaken. Was I too vague? Too assertive? I thought that the discussion Friday with Jim Gordon and Ira Flatow went well. Still, there’s always the problem of what the French call l’esprit de l’escalier, the mot juste that comes to you on the staircase, after you’ve left the salon. The great thing about writing a blog is that you get to speak in public from the staircase.

Kramer then gets to the meat of his post, the importance of labeling depression a disease. What is useful to me, though, is his notion of speaking from the staircase. Bloggers are sometimes accused of rash writing, of dashing off un- or ill-considered rants. There may be some of that out there (out here?), but more often, I find that bloggers, while relishing the immediacy of the medium, also take seriously their opportunity to consider their subject, whether it's psychiatry or arts criticism or midwifery, away from the pressures of conversation and heated argument. A conversation still happens, but in a new paradigmatic way: everyone, blogger and commenter alike, has the chance to reconsider, interject, redact. Instead of thinking of bloggers--especially amateur critics--as uninformed hotheads, maybe we need to remember that they're trying their level best to be excellent company: informed, considered, thoughtful.

Measure for Measure

No, not Shakespeare. Here's a blog that, at least at first glance, is a convergence of the many players in the arts blogging discussion. The blog in question is Measure for Measure. Let's count the levels of intrigue:

1. Overt subject matter: songwriting (hence the clever title)
2. Implied subject matter: Art. Or at least the creative process.
3. Written by: songwriters (famous ones, too. Andrew Bird, Roseanne Cash, Suzanne Vega, Darrell Brown
4. Blog host: New York Times. See, this is where it gets interesting. Andrew didn't call Roseanne one day and say, "Hey, let's start a blog and tell everyone what it's like to write a song. What's Suzanne up to--think she'd want to help out?" The Times is paying these contributors to write a "blog" (usually unnecessary quote marks quite necessary here), which will appear for a predetermined number of weeks, with scheduled entries, and the engine of one of the country's largest media outlets providing its power.

Is Measure for Measure a blog? NYTimes.com says so. But it's a very different creature than the umpteen million blogspot-powered one-man bands we might think of when we say blog. For that matter, it's a very different creature than the bigger bands, too (Alex Ross et al). And it's one being replicated by every newspaper and periodical of means in the country. Do these Big Blogs threaten the democratization of arts criticism that the blogosphere might be about? Do they stifle independent, small voices (and doesn't that sound familiar: maybe the questions never change, just the mediums do)? Or are they just part of the mix, adding to the unruly conversations virtually tripping over one another to get our attention?

The plot thickens

In responding to my post about Michael Agger's article, Eric M draws parallels to the film industry's own version of writing for the page vs. Web: video vs. film. I commend his comments to you, but I want to highlight this statement of his:

We would be wise to accept that a blog critic can not (and should not) compete with a traditional critic using traditional methods, but instead should forge a new path using the strengths of the Internet to his/her advantage.

Agreed, but what happens as those traditional methods disappear? And they are disappearing. It would be terrific to be able to read meaty criticism in the local newspaper, then go online and find another take. But when the paper cuts the critic's position, should we be content with the bullet points of an online review? To be fair, blogging critics write long (and how), thoughtful reviews, but Agger notes that blogging is exempt from the rules of online writing. That is, we seek out blogs that match our interests, and are content to read patiently on blogs. But that means that the population reading the paper isn't going to see these reviews, or be aware they even exist. Do we care if the general populace has access to arts criticism, even if they don't give a whit about last week's concert of the Poughkeepsie Chamber Rock Music Festival?

A quick read

Michael Agger's article for slate.com, Lazy Bastards, contributes directly to our conversation. As writing moves online, turns out that who reads it and why is impacted by how it is written. Think bullet points, bolding, and links to more information (for Type As only). We may need to refer to his directions in evaluating effective online writing. Obvious question: can good criticism be good online?

Work vs. Leisure

As I begin this project, my desk is the table on my front porch. My dog sits, mostly quietly, beside me; planters are blooming color and lushness, the breeze is pleasant, my coffee is hot. I am being funded to research: to read, to write, to surf the net, to think. For the next ten weeks I will be exploring the role of the blogosphere on arts criticism in our society (you can learn more by reading a synopsis of my funding proposal here). Today, as I prepare to think about the intersection of technology, traditional media, music, society, and consumers of art, I'm interruped (read: annoyed) by the radio from a car parked in front of my home. It's blasting some kind of heavy metal rock music, disturbing my peace, and more importantly, my Work. My very important work.

Across the street from my condo is a new building project; the source of the loud music is from the car of a construction guy, on break (at 9:30am he was already on break, having arrived for work around 6; I was just settling in to my aforementioned important work).

Music is a leisure time activity, available to all, free. But we pay, depending on our interest and ability to do so: for opera tickets, or subscriptions to the symphony; for large venue rock concerts, weekend bluegrass festivals, mp3 downloads, public radio memberships, and on and on. For some particularly privileged few, music can be work.

Not for the painter/bricklayer/taper/carpenter in the truck in front of my place, though. Music for him is escape from the work of the day (some might call it real work). A discussion of the place of music criticism in our society can't really take place without thinking about class and power and yes, privilege. Your thoughts on this, and related topics, are most welcome. Everyone's a critic only if everyone joins in.

Working Bibliography (updated 6/16/08)

Derfner, Joel. Swish: My Quest to Become the Gayest Person Ever. New York: Broadway Books, 2008.

Diamond, Harold J. Music Criticism: An Annotated Guide to the Literature. Metuchen, N.J.: The Scarecrow Press, 1979.

Grant, Mark N., and Eric Friedheim. Maestros of the Pen: A History of Classical Music Criticism in America. Boston, Mass.: Northeastern University Press, 1998.

Guillory, John. Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.

Haskell, Harry. The Attentive Listener: Three Centuries of Music Criticism. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996.

Heintze, James R., Michael Saffle, and College Music Society. Reflections on American Music: The Twentieth Century and the New Millennium: A Collection of Essays Presented in Honor of the College Music Society. Vol. 16. New York: Pendragon Press, 2000.

Jameson, Fredric. The Cultural Turn: Selected Writings on the Postmodern, 1983-1998. London; New York: Verso, 1998.

---. Postmodernism, Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press, 1991.

Kramer, Lawrence. Critical Musicology and the Responsibility of Response: Selected Essays. Aldershot, England; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006.

Levy, Alan Howard. Radical Aesthetics and Music Criticism in America, 1930-1950. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1991.

Price, Kingsley. On Criticizing Music: Five Philosophical Perspectives. Vol. 1978-1979. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981.

Ross, Alex. The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century. 1st ed. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007.

---. "The Well-Tempered Web." New Yorker 22 October 2007: 78.

Said, Edward W. On Late Style: Music and Literature Against the Grain. 1st ed. New York: Pantheon Books, 2006.

Schick, Robert D. Classical Music Criticism: With a Chapter on Reviewing Ethnic Music. Vol. 1879. New York: Garland, 1996.

Steinberg, Michael, and Larry Rothe. For the Love of Music: Invitations to Listening. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.