Writing about Writing about Writing. Isn't that tiring?

 Becoming the sole author and therefore editor-in-chief  of oneword with emilyjones has brought me face to face with the realization that, in fact, producing large quantities of words actually is not very hard. If I was able to write over 2000 words about a normal day I had, then I could absolutely write at least as much about a bunch of weird, contradictory, artists from the 60s and 70s. When people become stressed about needing to write, paralyzed with fear of just getting started, that is fundamentally a skill issue. Are you afraid of the blank page? Well, there is only one thing to do about it: fill it with stuff. 

No, filling a page with stuff is actually not very difficult, and I am very fortunate that, starting now, the majority of my job is to fill pages. I have to write my qualifying exam essays at the end of this month, and then after that, I have to write my prospectus, and then after that, I have to write my dissertation. And in between that time, I'm expected to spin off bits of those dissertation chapters into either conference papers or short articles. Once I'm in the post-QE world, I'm mainly a producer of text. 

The problem comes in when the text has to be good or polished. No, I don't have a fear of writing-- I have a fear of editing. I'd rather just purge text into a document and let it cease to be my responsibility there. In a perfect world,  I would attach computer keys to my fingers like so many leeches and just close my eyes until the words have drained out of my body and my humors are balanced again.

If writing was a humor which one would it be? Probably black bile. 

I've been having these thoughts about writing because I spent all morning doing it. There's not really much more to say about it. I woke up a little after 8, ate coffee and oatmeal, then sat at my laptop and thought really hard about "theorists and practitioners" in the 1960s who were interested in "deconstruction" by breaking up words and gestures in ways that remove them from their contexts. I just talked about that over and over to the tune of about 2800 words.

There always comes a point about an hour or two into a long bit of writing when I realize that I am, in fact, a serious person who reads books. Of course, attentive readers will remember that I also knew this yesterday. But I really knew it today. I'm starting to feel really good. However, I don't want to get cocky, because the cockier I feel today, the more issues Mary Ann will find with the essay when we go over it. That's the grad school law of equivalent exchange.

Right now, I'm writing for you in the front row of the Music and Capitalism lecture. Today, Nick is explaining copyright law, including AI ownership. But, plot twist, get this, if we think about all things as property, as things that can potentially be owned, then extraction goes way beyond AI. And that of course means we have to look at clips of Graceland by Paul Simon. Nick just said that when Graceland is played, "the Paul Simon estate" gets paid. Paul Simon must be upset by that fact, seeing that he's very much still alive. 

He's out there somewhere. Hanging out with Carol King, as they bond over being dead to Nicholas Mathew.