Back to LiveJournal, complete with a new title for the blog and a new design, but it’s still the same old random chitchat of before.
I’ve stopped writing for Examiner.com after having accumulated almost 150 postings on a wide variety of subjects. ‘Twas fun, no doubt about it. But it was just too darn time-consuming given my almost dizzying collection of professional hats. An Examiner blog requires careful research, may involve attending concerts and the like, and can’t just be random thinking about whatnot and whatever. That’s all fine and dandy, but not when you chair a department in a major conservatory, teach a substantial overload at the same conservatory, teach privately, teach part-time at a major university, write program notes and articles for one of the world’s great orchestras, give pre-concert lectures for that same orchestra, free-lance lecture a bit on the side, and attempt to give the occasional recital into the bargain.
Besides, by writing a quasi-journalistic music column I kept running into an ethical dilemma: how does a working musician comment, at least obliquely, on the music profession in his area, without traipsing beyond proper professional boundaries? I knew from the beginning that I wasn’t going to be writing concert reviews; those would be out of the question given that I would be reviewing friends, colleagues, or God help me, former students. But even within the relatively safer confines of CD and book reviews I felt queasy. Reluctant to speak negatively about anything, given the potential for damage, I acquired a relentless gung-ho cheeriness whenever I spoke of anything in a qualitative manner. Whatever criticism I might offer would be so hedged and qualified that — as one very perceptive reader pointed out — I dealt almost exclusively in straw men, never the real thing.
Of course I could write promotional-style articles that alerted the readers to forthcoming concerts and the like, but I took little pleasure in those; my DNA is short on publicity genes.
Thus general-subject essays remained, beyond the shadow of a doubt my best articles. However, such essays are labor-intensive: first comes an idea, which must be developed, and presented in decent-quality prose complete with humor, insights, or interesting turns of phrase. I couldn’t churn those things out every 2-3 days.
So I decided to let it go and I’m back to regular, private blogging. More than anything, a blog helps me to maintain my writing chops and thus stay in shape for my work at the SF Symphony. And I can write on all manner of subjects that please me, and not just the classical music scene.