July 9, 1999

Every great piece of writing I read on pop culture--every single one--makes me feel small and insignificant. I wonder when my words will sing like the words of so many other writers I admire. I read stuff like Dave Marsh's column on Bruce Springsteen and a new rock book and I'm simply blown away. It's been said that writing about music is like dancing about architecture, but that's bullshit. The best rock writing takes the music and gives it meaning--it helps you understand what it does to your mind, body and soul. There's clearly something going on there, and what better way to figure that out than through words?

But I'm also moved by Richard Meltzer's recent cover story for the Chicago Reader: "Some days, possibly most, it occurs to me (in no uncertain terms) that rock, and all writing about it, has NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING. Y'know: 'anymore.' Imagine a world where manymany, toomany people wrote about...meatless lasagna."

That's pretty much how I feel sometimes, too. Will record review X or dumb column Y really add anything to the dialogue between one listener and his or her music? What right do I have to barge into that relationship with my own damn opinions? And if I take the opposite tack--if I base all my rock writing on my own reactions, pure and nasty as driven mud, without trying to form those reactions into ideas that can be understood by all--who the fuck should care what I think? Hell, that's true of everything I write.

Does anyone care? Is anyone listening? Bueller? Bueller? More words lost to the internal and external voids...