Tag Archives: Blogging

Subjects Too Long for Blog Posts

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I suppose by now it should be normal for me to understand that not every day will bring a super-intense topic to post about. It’s less about laziness or lack of subject matter, I think, than about the time it would take to address certain topics.

Legal stories which I see in the news, for example, always catch my eye. I’m quite fascinated by the practice of law and legal philosophy, by the prospect of writing blog posts about such things simply doesn’t seem practical. The very essence of law resides within the confines of deeply-researched and well-thought out arguments—clearly not fodder for shorter length blog posts.

Philosophy in general, too, is something I think about quite often, but which eludes usefulness as a blogging subject. It’s much too amorphous a concept to be siphoned down to a few short paragraphs, and thus makes little sense to try and tackle. Perhaps there is indeed a good way to conjecture upon these subjects in a cleanly digestible fashion, but up until now, I haven’t been able to identify it.

Today It Was Sunny and Hailing in Atlanta

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It’s funny how some days you plan on writing one thing and then move to another unexpectedly. Perhaps the most intriguing part about it is how you come to the second though process almost as quickly as you remember coming to the first. Today was one of those days for me.

I had originally intended to write my post today on another music-related news piece, but was side-tracked by something a lot more mundane: the weather. While not the most brilliant of subjects to use for smalltalk, I was nonetheless struck by the power with which the weather in Atlanta commanded my attention today.

Atlanta isn’t exactly known for extreme weather; not in the sense that Boston has blizzards of Miami has hurricanes. Today though, the cloudy morning skies turned dark gray around 3:00 PM—right before the downpour of hail started. Needless to say I was caught off guard. Not so much because of the hail (we do have hail in Atlanta from time to time in the spring), but because of the speed with which it suddenly changed to sun after about 20 minutes. The tornado warning I got on my phone was made all the more comical by the light shining through my blinds.

And what side-tracked me the most? It made me miss Amsterdam—and my time there—so much. Anyone who’s ever been to The Netherlands will tell you that Dutch weather is a clusterfuck of indecisive bouts of precipitation and wind. It literally is sunny one minute and hailing ten minutes later—sometimes the hail came down as the sun was bright and out. That’s what today’s hail-and-sunshine mixture made me miss: the time I spent walking along those canals and drinking black coffee. Ironic, isn’t it? The affects that weather can have on us even years after it’s passed. Go figure.

The Making of a Music Lover

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Happy Birthday Mom and Dad

Today was my parents’ birthday. Yes, they both have the same birthday. So as I was busy writing the traditional birthday post on their Facebook walls this morning, I started thinking about how my parents shaped not only my life (duh), but how they’ve made me so much of who and what I am (a die-hard music lover and artist). I began to really take a moment to remember just how my parents each played a role in my growth not simply as their son, but as someone who is (more or less) forever tied to the world of music. And the more I thought—the more I remembered—the more I really began to see just how much of an impact they had on me in that arena as well. In fact, it’s an impact they continue to have every day.

Induction

I suppose my induction into the world of music took place in my youth, but it really geared up around the time I was 10. That’s when my real education began. It was because of my parents—what they introduced me too was lightyears ahead of most any and everything my peers had in their CD players (yes, we still used those back then). It began, then ramped up—and then I never looked back.

My Dad gave me what I will always refer to as my first Big Five: The Beatles, The Kinks, The Who, The Doors, and Cream. Some people hear The Who’s “Baba O’Riley” and think of CSI: NY; I just think of my Dad. From there, it was just a hop and a skip to Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane, and Jethro Tull. I vividly remember hearing Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love” for the very first time; I’d dozed off on the couch when he popped the CD in the player. I heard that Jack Bruce bassline, sat straight up, and said “what is THAT?!”

From Mom I got more of a taste from the ’70s; Led Zeppelin, Queen, Fleetwood Mac…and metal. I actually wouldn’t discover until more than a decade later just how into metal my mom actually was. KISS and Def Leppard were favorites, so I guess it shouldn’t have surprised me when she asked if I’d go see them in concert with her last summer. And so we did.

Me, Mom and my brother Josh at KISS and Def Leppard last summer

My brother Josh, Mom and me at KISS and Def Leppard last summer

“Mom, I’m Gonna Start a Band”

My parents took me to my first concert. And not a Backstreet Boys show either. My parents took some friends and me to The Masquerade in downtown Atlanta (google it, it’s still around and still a popular venue). We saw Bowling for Soup. Don’t laugh; they rocked and kicked ass. In fact, I’ve gone on to see them almost 10 times since then, and more than once my Mom has gone with me.

I’m not sure many parents would even drive their kids down to Masquerade, let alone take their kids to a show there. It’s not exactly PG; Masquerade is a real venue, complete with people full of tattoos, piercings, sweaty, jumping, and rocking out.

Around this time—my 13th birthday—I got a knockoff Fender guitar starter pack. Pretty much the next sentence out of my mouth one morning was, “Mom, I’m gonna start a band.” And I did. My buddy got the same starter set, and we set out to conquer the world. I loved that guitar; I still do. It reminds me of my roots.

My first guitar, and still one of my first loves

My first guitar, and still one of my first loves

New and Different Tastes

My parents are such lovers of music that it was just as valid to them to hear me say I wanted to be a rockstar as saying I might want to be a doctor or lawyer. It was natural, and I believe that because their love of music extended well beyond what they were familiar with, they could understand my obsession with something that spoke so deeply to me.

While other parents continued to find comfort in their Zeppelin and Beatles albums, my parents took a trip with me through my teen-year discoveries; Simple Plan, Sum 41, Yellowcard, My Chemical Romance, and Eve 6 were just as valid and exciting to them as Fleetwood Mac or The Who. In fact, I saw Eve 6 with my Dad just a couple summers ago on their 2013 U.S. tour.

Me and Dad at Eve 6's summer 2013 tour

Me and Dad at Eve 6’s summer 2013 tour (notice I’m wearing one of my Bowling for Soup shirts)

I’m not sure how many other people out there were (are) lucky enough to experience these same dynamics, but I can’t imagine too many. Most probably experienced the brush-off that so many people get. But I was lucky enough to escape that. My parents share my love of music and discovery, and that drives me every day.

Days As a Journalist and DJ

When my rockstar career ended (yes, pause for dramatic effect), I decided my next adventure would be as a music journalist. Actually, I completely fell into music journalism, but that’s a story for another day. And even as I was starting to find my way in that cutthroat industry, guess who was beside me, editing my pieces to make them tighter and better? That’s right, the parents.

And when the journalism turned to DJ-work, there was a desire to push my drive yet again. I’ll never forget the first time I was on the air on my college show in Boston, doing my broadcast with my parents streaming from home in Atlanta. They listened to the whole thing (2 hours worth), and when he called me after, I believe my Dad’s words were, “man that was so fucking cool.”

Me on my show, Underground Takeover

Me on my show, Underground Takeover

I took my Mom out last summer to a little indie show to see a band I’m good friends with. The band, mind you, is a little on the screamo side; not exactly what most people my parents’ age would be interested in listening to. But during the course of the show, what really stuck out to me was when my Mom noted, “wow, they are incredible performers.” That level of appreciation for something so far removed from her own tastes is something that I think makes my Mom so special. Many times, it’s my parents who are the first to hear the new artists I find and give me feedback. They really haven’t steered me wrong yet.

Me and Mom at an alternative/scream concert last summer

Me and Mom at an alternative/scream concert last summer

Music Entrepreneur

And now, as I’ve changed my path yet again, it’s paved and bridged by a mutual respect and insatiable love of music. Many parents wouldn’t understand their kid when they hear the words, “I think I want to be a music entrepreneur.” What does that even mean?! I’m still not totally sure, though I’m figuring it out every day. What I am sure of is that my parents are behind me yet again. They continue to help me navigate, all the while partaking in the amazing music scenes that I’ve become privy to.

So as I sit here on their birthday night, I think about how I’m thankful not only for a good relationship in general, but for a shared love of something that is and has become so important to me. Music is freedom and in it lives a certain amount of respect and love; it’s that respect and love that exacerbates the excitement of sharing new music with one another. It’s what draws us together and creates the paradigm we live in. So when I listen to Cream or The Who, I think of my Dad. And when it’s KISS or Def Leppard on the radio, I think of my Mom. Even when it’s Bowling for Soup I can’t help but think of my first concert with my parents. And I can’t look back at anything I’ve done in this business without thinking of them collectively.

I think that’s a good thing.

Blogging: One Month In—A Retrospective

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Today marks one month since I started blogging every day, and man has it been a long month. Though long doesn’t necessarily mean bad, and in the last few weeks I’ve found myself able to talk about a number of topics that might not have occurred to me otherwise. True, a lot of my posts have been on topics like music and tech that I continually follow, but the desire to write every day has enabled me to streamline my thoughts into a more digestible format.

In the last month, I’ve discussed numerous things in the music and tech space, including:

Yet I’ve found myself able to write about things that otherwise would seem unimportant, had I not had a goal to write every day. I’m not sure writing posts on writer’s block, on singing, art, and on concepts of passion would ever have occurred to me without the goal to produce new material:

Perhaps the most intriguing thing that’s happened though is how my desire to write has only become more engrained in me. I’ve always been a writer—essays, journalism, poetry, and research papers always came fairly easily to me, and even provided a sense of enjoyment most times. But now my writing has taken on a whole new dynamic in my life.

In fact, it mirrors what artists tell me when I ask why they choose the tough path of day jobs and long nights on the road: “I do it because just like I wake up every morning and need to breathe, I need to play music.” And that’s how writing is to me now. I wake up ever morning and need to breathe, and then I need to write.

Writing Every Day

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Some days it’s really hard to sit down and write something not because it’s been a terrible day or there’s nothing to write, but simply because the flow doesn’t come. I wouldn’t even necessarily call it writer’s block because on days like this (for me, at least) there are a number of topics rolling around in my head, but one of which I seem to feel motivated to expand on. The topics themselves are valid and thought-provoking, but perhaps it’s worth noting that some days are meant more for thought than for actual writing.

That said though, I still think that endeavoring to write every day helps the mind (again, it’s at least true for me) explore new concepts even when we’re not focused on them. The importance of writing is more about taking the mass of concepts in one’s head and attempting to unravel them for an outsider’s perspective. Thus I think that even on the hardest days, it’s still important to force anything out and onto the page simply to see what comes of it. Many times that’s really the only way we are able to see something in a more concrete context, rather than leaving it as an amorphous thought left to float inside one’s head.

I Miss the Amorphous Power of Poetry

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I haven’t written poetry in months. Probably somewhere near half a year at this point. For me that’s like an eternity.

Poetry used to be one of my most expressive forms of communication. I used to write so much that it became necessary to start dividing the pieces into separate collections. As of yet, most of those collections haven’t been finished to the point which I would like.

Yet what I miss most isn’t writing a poem per se, but what writing a poem allowed me to do. It allowed me to write something that could be left set in stone. It did not need to be researched, backed up, sourced, or set up as the solution to or for an argument. A poem could exist in and of itself; its value existed simply because it did.

In many ways writing poetry is easier because it allows me to just write, and look for patterns and meaning in what I write after I write it. I don’t need to start with a central thought and build out an argument around it. In many ways, it’s the same dynamic as I enjoy with blogging.

Poetry is so powerful precisely because of its ambiguous nature. The amorphous power that resides in a poem, terse or epic, is innate to its nature as a piece of writing that is purposely enigmatic. Every syllable could mean something—or it might not. Regardless of what your high school English teacher might have forced on your thought process, poetry isn’t about finding the “right meaning” that’s hidden between the words. It’s about finding the right meaning for you, something which could be very different from the meaning for the person sitting next to you.

This is what I miss most about writing poetry. Its sprightly chirping of words that could mean something, or nothing—words that could have been carefully chosen, or words that were just thrown onto a page and never wiped off. In the end, it’s irrelevant. Poetry is about the search, not the find; that’s why it intrigues me so much. I will have to write more in the coming months.

Further Musings on Writer’s Block: Day Two

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As the writer’s block seems to continue, thoughts dance through my head that anyone who know’s me would be slightly confused with. Sure, it’s a well-known fact (at least by those who know me) that I’m a huge art, history and music buff, and as such, these are the topics that typically dominate my writing. Even business and tech have come to the forefront of my preferred subject lists, even as I continue to educate myself in them.

What only those closest to me know is my real fascination with things that are well outside the realm of any humanities study. I was never a strong math student; in fact, I hated math. I hated it every day, every night; because it never made sense in my head that there can be only one answer. I was raised by two lawyers—in my world there’s never just one answer. Thus it would follow that as I’ve completed my schooling and graduated from college, I would only interact with math in professionally necessary capacities: taxes, data metrics, simple calculations, etc.

Yet in times when I find the creative juices refusing to flow, times like today, I find my mind drifting back to topics of mathematical thought, and other topics that are most days seemingly beyond my appreciation. Because why should sitting and pondering mathematical principles appeal to me? I struggled every day in grade and high school with it. Want me to write an 8-page essay? No problem, done in a couple hours. Do these 30 math problems? I’ll see you next week.

Perhaps it’s precisely my artistic mindset that drives me to ponder about things like mathematical thought and application—the worst thing for an artist is to feel that you’ve mastered something so much that it’s become stale to your growth. Mastery of any such thing in itself is irrelevant; what matters is how it feels. Am I being challenged or is this a rehashing of what I did yesterday? Thus on day two of my writer’s block, I find myself thinking not of tech trends or the socio-economics of medieval Britain, but of the interconnections of math principles and philosophical thought. Go figure.

Musings on Writer’s Block

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Some days, the words flow onto the page very easily, and some day’s they don’t. Today is one of the latter. That said though, even writer’s block itself can be a constructive lesson in writing. It teaches you that even the most adept writer struggles sometimes to come up with a thought process worth putting down for others to read.

But that actually begs a few question about the thought processes we as writers discard as “not good enough.” Are they really not up to par, or is it simply our nature as writers and creators to deride ourselves until we come up with something truly “worth writing?” Just today I’ve discarded numerous ideas for posts because they didn’t seem to be “enough” for me to put out to a readership.

But perhaps that sort of self-critical thought process is in fact too self-critical. Self-criticism is part of the creative process—it’s what we as creators feel helps us push forward to our greatest productions. So perhaps the whole writer’s block demon is indeed a blessing in disguise. Irritating though it might be, it nonetheless helps us to distinguish our sub-par thoughts from the truly remarkable ones. For me, I’ll try to keep a more open mind when it comes to the writer’s block I know will inevitably come back around.

Why I Tend to Write Longer Posts

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Some Topics Require Them

For those who have been reading and following my posts over the past couple months, it won’t come as much of a surprise that I prefer a longer format than just a couple of paragraphs. Of course this doesn’t mean that I seek to write book-length essays, but I find that a number of the topics which I’ve covered recently deserve a lengthier response. That said, in the digital age where news it consumed at a light-speed rate, I realize that there is certainly something to be said for the terse blog post as opposed to its longer cousin. I suppose it’s worth noting where my tendency for longer posts came from, and why its germination was welcomed at the time.

Terse Little Blurbs Did Not Suffice

When I first began my career in blogging, as a music journalist as it were, shortened posts never got the job done to my liking. Terse little blurbs are cute and easy to read, but within the context of the music reviews and explanations, they do not suffice (and indeed the reason I started writing in the first place was because the reviews I was reading were unfocused pieces of fluff at best). Thus for me, it became necessary to lengthen the music article so that it addressed its subject matter appropriately—or at least to my liking.

I decided that if I was going to write music reviews, than my readers were going to be able to “hear” the music after reading my article. They would get a basic rundown of the instrumentation, the time breaks, the lyrics—things that make songs really unique. Otherwise, I reasoned to myself, what would be the point of reading a music review anyway? Music journalism, at its core, should be about the music, not the intra-band politics that so many publications seem to think take premier importance.

But I digress.

Debating with the World

To go along with my penchant for writing detailed posts on music and performances, it’s also worth acknowledging that I am and always have been a student of history. For non-history majors, this means that in my world, research and arguments go hand-in-hand, and you would never dream of presenting one without the other. As a result, I find it quite against my grain to write a post and not back it up with a series of sources and/or further arguments.

Brevity is indeed a virtue in many parts of life, but too much of a good thing is never good (as the saying goes). Brevity used beyond its worth doesn’t help you present a good piece to your readership; it leaves you with a dangling point, and them with questions about where the rest of the argument is. Does that mean that every post should be footnoted at the bottom? Of course not. But it does mean that presenting an argument that is fully-fleshed out (or as much as you can make it so) is much harder to disprove. There is something to be said for viewing every blog post as an opportunity to debate with the world. And win.

Start Writing—Anything

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In a short piece posted earlier this morning, Hunter Walk talked about writing, and how the need to be right is many times what stops people from putting their thoughts out there. Whereas some may seek to “write the definitive post” on a topic as Walk puts it, his advice, rather, is to pick something you’re fairly confident you know about and “riff a bit.” This is directly in line with my thinking when it comes to putting out something with my name on it; do the best I can writing the piece, make sure all basic spelling and grammar is correct, and then see what comes back my way in terms of commentary or questions.

I would, though, dare to take Walk’s advice one step further: if you want to start writing, don’t just write blog posts—write anything. Write news articles to learn how to instigate an investigative process, write essays to learn how to really flesh out an argument, write poetry to better understand the concepts of metaphors and literary devices, do interviews to learn how to speak to people and translate it into compelling writing. Not all of these things will pan out (and you may not enjoy all of them, or even any of them), but in sharpening your teeth on different writing styles, you lear how to mix and match to make your own pieces (blog posts, for example) more powerful.

As you descend into learning each new style in a hands-on way, the need to be right will fade some, and what you come away with is a more comprehensive understanding of presenting and/or winning an argument. The ironic side-effect of this (in my experience as a music journalist) is that people suddenly begin to think of you as a voice to take seriously. Go figure: stop trying to be the definitive voice, and somehow you get closer than you ever were when you were trying!

Of course, there’s an even more basic reason to write (and very much a reason I do): it helps the mind to work through new concepts and move the creative process along. Don’t worry too much about being right—just write.