Date: 10 December 2004
The last post of 2004, and 2005 were not to be fabulous years for blogging. The post promises a lot of things I never did:
Best of years (I don't think I've done this in a long time)
Best movies ever
Definitive Buffy entry
Retirement of glenn mcdonal (though he still posts now and then)
I do still manage my projects by scholarship teaching service and personal.
I've got a little time on my hands: What should I do next?
For one, I'm going to revivify the blog. I like doing it, and more I like having it done: I can see exactly how I wasted my time a certain week. It's coming up on the end of the year, the season of best-of lists. I don't have the money or leisure to speak authoritatively on the best X of the year, so last I year I dropped the 50 bestest songs ever on you, and the bestest albums of the last two years (bigger sample size, see). What I lack in money and leisure I make up for with subjectivity. I found in my papers recently a 1999 of my favorite movies ever. In my next entry, I'll type this up for posterity, and make any revisions I see fit. After that, you can expect to see my definitive Buffy entry, since the text is now complete, and maybe a catch up of the last two years of cd's, though I'm not sure that I'm that active a music fan anymore.
Getting back to art, after 2 political posts, an unpublished post on the retirement of glenn mcdonald, and months of nothing, will be a notable return to "normal," if I manage it. I ground my teeth for so long since November 2 that part of a tooth fell out. Art as a refuge might not be that noble, but it keeps me sane. It's also easy to swivel, while immersed in art, to the political conditions of its existence. In fact, it's getting hard not to. During the present reign of terror, with its malaprops, lies, and degradations of language, intense devotion to literature is important, if only to keep language, liberal education, and the human spirit alive.
Next year I'm off from teaching (next year I'm off from teaching!) so I'll pour it on with my dissertation. One of the four categories that I use to manage my time (teaching, admin, research, and leisure) is going latent, so I need to redirect that energy, and I don't mean toward leisure. I hope to have the complete thing drafted next year. I can't say for sure whether A Round of Fiddles will play a role in it or not-- probably not, since I don't really want to get caught up in the rhetorical battles of the poetry blogosphere. I do need to create some other "information architecture" through which to route my work, though, since it took me two years to produce a 30 page prospectus (and my reading really isn't done).
In the face of this little pledge for activity, I should note that I'm about to take off on a two week, cross-country adventure with Willow. I'll be writing while I'm at my mom's I'm sure, but might not actually post again til 2005. But despair not, gentle reader, I shall return.
