Some comments on previous posts, together with my finally getting around to reading The Metaphysical Club this summer, prompt the following reflection on writing about music:

That whatever pleasure or profit is to be gained by it arises out of failure. You can never hit the bull’s-eye, the music. (There is no bull’s-eye.) But you have to shoot at it anyway, have to make believe it exists. (The words can help you do this.) You can’t write without it, without making out of that absent center a positive presence. It’s a target, but not a goal, for the writing remains something other. Anyway, the richest place is not in that unreachable center, but in the surroundings.

And after you’ve been shooting for a while, you realize that you’ve never listened quite so closely before.

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Since this is such a short post, let me take a moment to mention a few recent updates (or lack of them) in the design & function of this blog. (1) I mentioned before that I was going to try to change the comment filter so that I don’t have to pre-approve comments. The site is currently set up so that, once the commenter’s identity has been approved a first time, there is no secondary approval needed. This seems fair, and particularly given how many “comments” are spam about selling shoes or chronic depression, I’ve decided to leave the filter as-is. Please just bear in mind that, if it’s your first time commenting, your comment won’t appear until the next time I visit the site and approve it; and if you don’t say something at least semi-specific (that is, a bit more than “your blog is very interesting” or “this blows”), I’m going to assume it’s spam. (2) I finally figured out what widgets are, and so have redesigned the side column a bit. There is a monthly archive; it seems like there are now enough posts to warrant such a thing. The links section is under construction, so you should see new links and new categories added over the next month or two. (3) As for tags—categories under which I can file certain posts to help the reader navigate the blog—more in a few months, when I figure out how to actually make them appear (if, that is, the design template, which I intend to keep, supports them).