Longtime and regular readers, however many there may be at this point, know that I have written a lot here since 2006. There is still a lot I would eventually like to write about but now is not the time. I hadn't even really planned to blog much this year (and I haven't) but Ethan's posts about Bjork songs inspired me to break from my break from blogging.
If you saw what I did between 2010 and 2020 here at Wenatchee The Hatchet then you'll understand, I hope, that after such a prolific decade of blogging a break can be taken. Unlike some bloggers I've met, barring extravagant quotes and transcriptions, I have made a point of writing my own material without resort to ghostwriters. Let the reader understand.
But it's been time for a break. The stuff I have hoped to blog about I still hope to blog about. Angelo Gilardino's five guitar sonatas deserve to be written about. The same can be said for the guitar sonata cycles of Ferdinand Rebay, Atanas Ourkouzounov, Dusan Bogdanovic, Wenzel Matiegka, and Carlos Guastavino, all of these composers have written sets of guitar sonatas I still want to write about. I even hope to continue writing about Nikita Koshkin's 24 Preludes and Fugues for solo guitar, although under the present circumstances I can't be sure whether the Western powers will have enough people willing to sustain and continue the work of completing the recording project Asya Selyutina began a few years back. I may of necessity switch to blogging about German Dzhaparidze's cycle as there are more videos of extracts from that cycle and it has been recorded in its entirety (and, of course, I have the recording).
Obviously anyone who saw those names and knows those sonatas knows that all of that constitutes a giant amount of score study and writing and I don't know when I'll be situated to get to that.
The big reading list (another "let the reader understand") is still in progress and has expanded. I've read some very good and very bad books in the process of reading through it and added a few titles.
There are pages with tags on the topics of music; Mars Hill; and animation for folks who come by. The pages aren't comprehensive so if there's specific stuff you wanted to find out about the history of Mars Hill, for instance, you may have to use the search engine, especially for posts between 2009 to 2012 where I hadn't even thought of tagging posts. It's probably worth saying yet again that this isn't a watchdog blog, was never a watchdog blog, and I have over the last ten years been skeptical about watchdog blogging for reasons I don't want to get into too much. The line between citizen journalism and yellow journalism is all too often non-existent in watchblogs much like the line between blogging and advertising is non-existent for the kinds of preachers who blog and in their blogging complain about bloggers. Comments are still constantly moderated and don't be surprised if my approach is to stonewall. It's not personal, it's more of my general approach.
Sometimes stuff happens IRL where blogging becomes less critical. I hope I have been able to be helpful to people who like music for contemporary classical guitar music and are interested in analyses of sonata forms for guitar. I hope I have been able to make some small contribution to a synergistic exchange of theoretical and historical ideas that can bridge the gap between "pop" and "classical". I believe that the one or two times Scruton said that kind of bridging ought to happen was where he was most right and it's a shame he basically did nothing to contribute toward such a project. I hope that Ragtime and Sonata Forms can be the start of such a project. I hope people who enjoy animation and anime have enjoyed what I've written there. I still feel that Batman: The Agony of Loss and the Madness of Desire is one of my better series and if you love Batman: the animated series then I hope you'll enjoy my work on that.
Which is another way of pointing out that, contrary to some of the people who have complained in comments, this blog has never "only" ever been about "ripping on Pastor Mark". I believe he became an unscrupulous and unprincipled sell-out and has been corrupted by the celebrity-building systems of pop Christian media. I would say that he's just the most identifiable right-wing variation of the gimmicky hipster, the blue state variation I've seen I've written about elsewhere at this blog. Fifteen years of chronicling the peak and demise of the Seattle megachurch took a lot of work. I had hoped they would repent and reform and some of the men and women certainly did but Mike Cosper's whole podcast would not have happened if the leadership at large had gone that route. What my blogging lacks for organization on Mars Hill it made up for by way of charting staff resignations in real time. When Bill Clem left Mars Hill Ballard I blogged about it within a day or so at most. That journalism degree I got wasn't much help on the job hunt over the last twenty years but it certainly did help me write at least 1,795 posts between the start of 2012 and the end of 2014.
How long this sabbatical will be remains to be seen. I intend to come back to blogging in the future but I'm at a place in my life where I realize I need to dial this part of life back.
So if you're reading this and you're a regular then you know I have plenty incubating material and if you're a visitor, well, I've sketched out a schematic of what this blog has done across a bit more than 5,300 posts across fifteen years. Best wishes to readers chris e, Jim, cal, Bill, Mara, Brad, Headless Unicorn Guy, ExeGe, Ethan (and the other Ethan, too), Bryan, toxopom and others who have made comments over the years. I pray you're all well. Just because I am taking a break from blogging here doesn't mean I won't stay in touch via blog interaction. I might come back to blogging later this year or might wait until 2023 or something. I don't know. I just know that after years of blogging I feel like I've reached a point where I feel like I need to take a break. Maybe by the time I come back all the Ferdinand Rebay solo guitar sonatas will be filmed or recorded. :)
May the peace of Christ be with you (and if you're secular or not Christian, I trust you get the basic idea behind it for you).
