Talk too much about what you want to do before you act, the theory goes, and you never will.

I once read an article which said that people should refrain from speaking about work they’re doing until it’s complete. As I remember it, there was a scientific study which suggesed that talking about doing something apparently “scratches the same itch”, neurobiologically speaking, as actually doing something.1

Talk too much about what you want to do before you act, the theory goes, and you never will.

I’m pretty sure I’ve taken that idea too far lately. There has been, in fact, a major change in my life which I haven’t written about yet. My plan was to announce it alongside some projects that I’ve been working on. But when I ended up being far, far busier than I had planned and all my work took much longer than I expected, I was still afraid to talk about things until they were almost ready to go because…

Well. You know.

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  1. You’ll just have to trust me on this because my Google-fu is failing me right now []

Some Thoughts on Roger Ebert’s Writing

I recently came across an aphorism which made me smile:

I smiled because – I mean – how many wooden, lifeless bits of prose have you read in your life which were caused by someone taking this idea too far? There’s a reason that this particular type of bad writing is often called “legalistic”: It is a joyless, bloodless, anti-human kind of writing – which is probably part of why you have to pay a lawyer $300 an hour to read it.

Most of the writers that I enjoy reading place their words on the page with a sort of lightness. It feels like someone speaking to you, like someone trying to be understood. If good writing is a sort of magic trick, then a good writer is the magician, the rabbit, and the top hat – all rolled up in one. It is craft combined with the courage to show yourself as you are that lets you pull yourself out of the hat.

It’s a hard thing, but some writers can seemingly do it with ease.
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Here’s the music that I’ve been listening to in March 2013…

Here’s the music that I’ve been listening to this month:

  • David Bowie quietly announced his first new studio album in a decade. ‘The Next Day’ (iTunes / Amazon) has been free to stream for weeks and now gets its official release. Some good stuff here!
  • Simon Green is a producer who releases music under the moniker of “Bonobo”1. If you missed his last album — the beautiful ‘Black Sands’ (and its subsequent album of remixes) — you’re in luck: He’s about to release a new collection called ‘The North Borders’. Its first single, ‘Cirrus’, is available now (iTunes / Amazon) and the video for it is already on YouTube. Enjoy the visual trip to M. C. Escher’s 1950’s Suburban fantasy:
  • Speaking of Escher, check out the track by that name on Chilly Gonzales’s “Solo Piano II” (iTunes / Amazon). Then buy the entire album.
  • Adrian Younge (of “Black Dynamite” renown) has collaborated on a new album with soul legend William Hart, the singer of The Delfonics. The somewhat literally-titled “Adrian Younge Presents the Delfonics” is a fun mix of modern and traditional approaches to the genre and is now online as a preview on NPR’s site. Pick it up on iTunes or Amazon and increase your shhhmooove factor by several orders of magnitude.2
  • Dave Grohl’s new documentary film ‘Sound City’ (iTunes) is ostensibly about the arc of a well-known music studio but, to me, it’s really more of a look at what imbues art with life. So much of what I love about music — and music-making — is in Grohl’s film and the soundtrack (iTunes / Amazon) makes great use of that Rupert Neve console.
  • “New York – Addis – London: The Story of Ethio Jazz (1965-1975)” by Mulatu Astatke is rocking my world. Sooooo good. (iTunes / Amazon)
  • What do you mean you haven’t heard “Anywhere But Here” (iTunes / Amazon) by Killer Mike?!? Fix that. Fix it now. Seriously — Every time I hear this track, El-P’s nasty synth bass line gives me involuntary Billy Idol-grade sneerface. In case you missed it when it came out, Mike’s “R.A.P. Music” album (iTunes / Amazon) contains so many bangers, one after another, that I believe it may qualify as a full English breakfast. Solid lyrics, coupled with some fantastic production to support them, have kept me listening to this since its release last year. And I think you’ll agree — Ronald Reagan hasn’t been pilloried like this since the heyday of 80’s hardcore punk.3
  • Speaking of smart, cool hip-hop, make sure you didn’t miss out on “Raw Money Raps” by Jeremiah Jae (iTunes / Amazon) which came out about the same time as Killer Mike’s album.

For all you Spotify users, I’ve made a playlist of these songs (and a few more). Click here to check it out!

  1. That lovable, most priapic of primates… []
  2. The Delfonics?“, you say. “Didn’t they perform a song in “Jackie Brown” that Pam Grier grooved to in her bathrobe while Robert Forster tried to maintain his cool?” You’re right again, my smart and cultured Veritrope readers. []
  3. Somewhere — Jello Biafra is smiling. Well… you know… smiling for him. []