Thursday, March 10, 2011

To shut up the crickets

I was finding I had many more interesting things to do rather than write this blog last summer, so I stopped. Every once in a while I would feel a twinge to start blogging again. One major guilt trip came during the annual conference of the Society for Music Theory. The meeting of the Music Cognition Interest Group was spent celebrating 25 years of existence, with remembrances of the state of music cognition research back then and comparing it with today. In doing so, Helen Brown of Purdue University was listing all the places music cognition research can be found nowadays, and passed around copies of the last few posts of this blog! This was awkward/funny for four reasons: 1) She didn't know it was my blog. 2) I was sitting right next to her. 3) I wasn't really paying attention to her speech at that point until halfway through her description of my blog, when I looked up in horrifying realization.* 4) My last post before this one is called Sexy Theory, which Helen relished in announcing to all of our colleagues. The awkwardness factor collapsed with Leigh Van Handel's (Michigan State) reminder to everyone that it was indeed my blog. Thanks, Leigh!

The second time came with the Grammy's, and an offer by my fiancée to help live-blog the event again. Yes, I have a fiancée now, along with three more children in a lovely Brady Bunch home. We even have our own Alice, except her name isn't Alice. Our schedules made watching the Grammy's impossible, much less live-blogging about them.

But finally, I got an itch to start writing the blog again. I've been stimulated by enthusiastic students, the prospects of my sabbatical, my upcoming wedding, and a friend who just e-published her first book. Speaking of which, my** first book came out last October. So, I plan to post about times a week. Lock up your interwebs and hide your backlinks, Musical Perceptions is back!

*Leigh, who was sitting right across from me, says the transition in my face was priceless.
**Mine, and nine other authors.

5 comments:

Harlan said...

*snort* I've got a similar story: it was the second orchestra rehearsal for a production of West Side Story. While I'd played it numerous times before, we'd never had ALL the wind parts covered in any previous production, and the person on the lowest reed book had never had an actual bass sax before. At break, I started gushing to this reed player about how he should check out this CD that I'd stumbled into (via the biggest library system in the US!). It was all chamber music for low saxes: bari sax, bass sax, contrabass, and... wait for it... SUBcontrabass. At the time, this CD artist had one of only six subcontras on the planet. Anyway, Jay let me go on for about a minute before informing me that he was that artist. :-)

Leigh VanHandel said...

It WAS hilarious. Congratulations on the book, the sabbatical, and the wedding, and glad to see you blogging again!

Terminal Degree said...

Welcome back, and congratulations on your new Brady Bunch life. (I want an Alice. How did you find Alice?) :)

Lisa Hirsch said...

Congrats and welcome back!

Robert Gable said...

Hey, I'll subscribe. Oh wait, I'm already subscribed. Good stuff.