Let me tell you about Texas.

It has the new Decemberists album and a cat.

Music criticism is getting excited about complimentary tickets to My Morning Jacket, whatever that is.

Music criticism is not dying. Don’t be a fucking dummy. It just gets smaller. It’s like this: the bigger bigger bigger (take sociology and see what I mean), the smaller smaller smaller (turn off your computer and see what I mean). I listen to less music than ever and value a good opinion more. It always happens like this. Watch Blade Runner and see what I mean. Once everything gets cut to ribbons again you’ll be all Ribbons, I remember those.

So what’s Texas? Poet Josh, who has no internet presence whatsoever, tells me he still remembers a mix I made for him about four years ago. “I bought the album for almost every song on that CD.” Five people mashing a panic button and straining some elegiac/Linda Blair shit about how critics are spouting missives into the void doesn’t mean anything.

The power to steal every record in the known universe has nothing to do with the mechanics of time or our ability to listen. It makes me sweat to have someone across the table screaming Why are you swallowing without chewing when I’m just like Shut up I’m trying to chew. And when someone burps and discourse comes out, all the brilliant minds—in search of fun, no doubt—will rush to point out how efficiently a few stiff-legged, crappy ideas trip up the frivol of “discovery” or having a remix beamed into your colon or something.

Words aren’t wasted unless they’re empty to begin with. Ideas and opinions aren’t, either. The prevailing charge that music writing doesn’t matter shouldn’t drive anyone into either hermetism or laziness, but it’s kinda happening all the time. Let people have a breath. They’ll re-engage.

And I promise that within a couple days, I’m just gonna toss good talk about records in the interest of coagulating agents and ass-plugging and whatnot.

***

me: wow it stopped raining

and yet i blog on!

Caleb: blog on man!

me: hit dem letters like it’s bloggle

Caleb: it is bloggle!

neeed italicss

me: sorry I was auditioning for the next the game album

(that IM was for the game)

Caleb: huzzah!

the ad at the top of gmail sez: “bloggers: who are they? New report reveals who bloggers are and what they are blogging about”