About

I don’t think of this thing as a blog, really. I am not timely enough or hip enough or snarky enough to be a good blogger. 

Rather, I think of this as a bportfolio of some of my past arts & culture criticism (broadly defined), and a bspace for new pieces. As a freelancer, I often have to spend about as much time “writing” query letters as I do writing, you know, actual stuff. This bspace allows me to tweak that ratio, to write directly, without the impediments of editors and remuneration and wide readership. Most of the pieces that appear here could never be published elsewhere, either because their news pegs are old (or non-existent), their arguments are half-baked, or their writing style is too loose, confessional, tangential.

Tangentially, if there’s an axiom of this bwhatever-it-is, it’s that every writer, and especially every cultural critic, writes from a particular perspective. The ploy of objectivity (not saying “I,” not admitting you were in the audience) does a disservice to everyone. I am not the first to point this out. But once you’ve allowed the “I” into your copy, why not flesh it out, make it honest and robust? In addition to “I thought” or “I felt,” why not “I fell asleep” or “It made me remember my dead sister” or “I only like ballet when I’m drunk”?