My Posted Works for June 8-15

I'm honestly going to try to keep this thing updated with works I've published on a weekly basis, especially since I have now added a second semi-regular avenue for my voice, SunDryed Affairs. I should hopefully be chiming in here weekly to post what new words I have scattered about the internet.

Last week's Nextbop column hearkens back to the same classicist/modernist jazz argument that sparks up from time to time.

I'm going to put this out plainly. I am tired of having this argument. I know that by mentioning it here, I'm part of the problem by even acknowledging it. But I also know that we can't move forward if we have all this infighting holding us back. When an angry old man starts spouting off at the mouth, we need to follow the late Sidney Lumet's example in Twelve Angry Men and start turning away en masse. There will be times like these when we can let talk like this still hold us down, but we need to move forward and make strides to embrace different lines of thought and leave the grackles outside to screech into the morning until they tire themselves out.

Also, fresh up today at SDA, my love letter to the city of Austin. (And yes, the second sentence is supposed to be that long and rambling.)

As a person of rather limited resources, I don’t go on vacation all too often. I hear vacationing is nice and I’m filled with appropriate levels of resentment whenever I see friends’ pictures on Facebook of their travels without the whole voyeuristic process becoming a hatred of others’ resources or my own wallowing in self-loathing (I’m trying to cut down). Yet from time to time, I’m actually able to get away from it all and revel in this vacation thing I hear so much about. A couple of months ago, I schlepped up to Austin for the South by Southwest music festival, which I found to be the perfect vacation for a neurotic control freak like me for a host of reasons. This was the likely the best vacation I ever had in my life (which is why I held this essay idea in my head for what’s now three months) and I realize it’s because it’s constructed exactly for my personality type. SXSW is totally keyed into passions I have about certain fundamental elements of life.