The Journey Almost Begins

So I’m launching a blog.

I’ll use it to report on my activities and interests, but what I will really be using this particular corner of cyberspace for is keeping a record of my lifetime’s ambition to listen to every single item in my music collection from start to finish and in order.

Sure, it’s not much of a lifetime project, but it is mine. And it is achievable, which if you ask anyone who has tried to climb Mt. Everest or take a hot-air balloon around the world or score with the homecoming queen at the 20th-year high school reunion is really the key to a good lifetime project. A-c-h-i-e-v-a-b-i-l-i-t-y.

Beginning tomorrow, and at least every workday from then until I have listened to and observed upon all 350 or so or my cassette tapes and CDs, I will be sharing my thoughts on the quality of my own my musical tastes. I’ll also have things to say about how I came to acquire said album, who I remember myself being at the time I acquired it, what was happening in the general vicinity of the movie that is my life starring me, and so on.

Some ground rules: “In order” means alphabetical by artist/band name and chronological for anyone from whom I have more than one album. I only have tapes and CDs because I’m too lazy to be bothered to download electronic music files and too cheap to buy an iPod or what have you. I’ll be working my way through the cassettes first. If any readers get inspired to send me new CDs, donations will be gratefully accepted, but I’ll be unlikely to buying anything new myself. (See: lazy, cheap.) Comments along the lines of “I can’t believe you don’t have a single Beatles albums!!!” when I skip from Bad Religion to Big Head Todd and the Monsters are expected and will be met with embarrassment, stammering, and downcast eyes.

I’m stealing more than a few of my tropes from my sister Ellen Clair (pick a name already; I never know how to address you in public) and my brother-in-law Scott. Thanks.

But why am I starting this blog now? Aren’t I just trying your patience? Well, a little. But I also have perfectly cromulent reasons for starting up this blog.

First, everybody else already has one. I’m just trying to maintain my street cred as the last of the late-adopters by starting to blog now.

Second, I now have a proper home office for my home-based business. “Proper” in this instance means “no TV.” I have to listen to my albums to keep myself sane, and I’ll no longer be able to easily turn away from my computer to watch yet another King of the Hill rerun. This blog will be a great way to slack without, you know, slacking.

Third, October 31--November 1 is the perfect date to launch a blog because it is also the annual kickoff date for NaNoWriMo. My sister sort of complained last year about National Novel Writing Month. For my own part, I’m just going to up and call the whole thing a bastardfest circle jerk.

Here is what the creators of this harbinger of the literary apocalypse have to say about NaNoWriMo (No I will not link to the site. Won’t. Can’t make me.):

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel
writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page
(50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30. ...

Because of the
limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's
all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your
expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

I’m out to prove that quality can come with quantity. I’ll keep a running tally of words for my blog. If I make 50,000 words by the end of the month (you won’t have to read them all), and nobody tells me that most of my words suck, I’ll go and punch the NanNoWriMo guys in their large, empty heads many times. Because, you know, it’s the size of the head you punch and the number of times you punch it that count, not the quality of the thoughts the head holds.

Last, I stumbled across an obituary for one Rev. Robert W. Shields (May 17, 1918--October 15, 2007) earlier this week. Rev. Shields appears to have had an odd form of late-onset OCD that compelled him to record his life in five-minute increments. He began diarying in 1972 and kept it up, recording his vitals and bowel movements as well as his trips to the store and such, until a series of strokes forced him to stop in 1997. Shields’ wife Grace indulged his dictation for a brief period before just putting an end to the whole thing.

The last sentence of the obit I read delivers a priceless observation from Grace: “When an interviewer had asked her about her husband’s fixation on posterity, she replied, ‘Good old posterity.'”

In that spirit, I offer the following observations on my magical musical journey to here, Virginia Beach, November 2007 to whenever, to good old posterity. May it always rise up to meet us.

Up Next: Aerosmith, Greatest Hits, 1980.

Word Count to Date: 902 (definitely off pace for 50K; maybe I’ll count comments toward my own total)