writing
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Resonant Thoughts: Paul Graham On Putting Ideas Into Words
“If writing down your ideas always makes them more precise and more complete, then no one who hasn’t written about a topic has fully formed ideas about it. And someone who never writes has no fully formed ideas about anything nontrivial.” Paul Graham, Putting Ideas Into Words Continue reading
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Resonant Thoughts: Tim Ingold’s “Correspondences” (2021)
“Words, spoken or handwritten, echo the pulse of things. They can caress, startle, enchant, repel…” “We might cease our endless writing about performance, and become performers ourselves.” “…we should work our words as craftsmen work their materials, in ways that testify, in their inscriptive traces, to the labour of their production, and that offer these Continue reading
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Notes On Paul Morley’s “Words and Music”
“Music is merely a form of guesswork about consciousness.” “Music is careful attention paid to ongoing experience.” – Paul Morley, Words and Music (16, 134). It was with much delight that a few weeks after finishing Bob Stanley’s Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! I read Paul Morley’s exhaustive, masterfully strange, and revelatory history of popular music, Words Continue reading
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On Ventrilo-Reading: How We Read Our Own Writing To See What We’re Trying To Say
Something I have been thinking about off and on for a while now (a few years?) is the question of how we read our own writing, especially during the editing stages. What sensibility kicks in when we evaluate and revise the pieces we’ve been working on in search of ways to make them better? In Continue reading
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Lessons From An Interview With John McPhee
In an interview with The Paris Review, John McPhee discusses ideas about writing process and structure. Here are some highlights: “The fundamental thing is that writing teaches writing.” “Structure is not a template. It’s not a cookie cutter. It’s something that arises organically from the material once you have it.” “Ideas occur, but what I’m doing, Continue reading
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On Editing Lessons: Pruning, Voice, And Style In Writing
As I was editing a piece of writing I discovered a number of words that kept popping up and watering down the work. So I took note of the words–words that had become habitual and distracting ticks, and unnecessary connective tissue–and pruned them out. Here’s some notes on what I found: “just, but/yet, almost, so, Continue reading
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On The Nature Of Blogs III
I have written before (here and here) about the nature of blogs and blogging. To add to that discussion, here’s four more ideas to add to the pile. This blog may be more for me than for you (though you’re welcome to it) because it’s an opportunity to: practice writing publicly, exercise efforts at inquiry Continue reading
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Notes On Some Kinds Of Writing
Some kinds of writing require you to be in a critical frame of mind. Some kinds of writing require you to be in a safe space. Some kinds of writing require you to be in dialogue with the work of others. Some kinds of writing require you to be patient. *** Some kinds of writing Continue reading
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On The Nature Of Blogs II: Matching Form And Content To Capture Meaning
As I have said elsewhere, practically speaking this blog is more for me than for you, sure, and tries to ask questions about musical things as I encounter them. And by things I mean: musical sounds, instruments, artists, aesthetics, technologies, codes and systems of signification, compositional techniques and performance practices, and so on. But metaphorically Continue reading
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