Point of View

Over on the Well, which I mentioned in yesterday's long post, it's been common over the years for people to have very, very different views of what, exactly, is going on. If you limited yourself to reading the books, decor, words, and sports conferences, you'd have quite a different view from someone who read the politics, media, and flame.ind conference. (Yes, flame is for random, and sometimes systematic, flaming.) I also learned the useful fact that the ratio of lurkers to posters is about 10 to 1.

The same things are true on the Web and in the blogosphere. If you read only composer blogs, you'd have a different view of the classical blogosphere from the one you'd have if you read only San Francisco classical bloggers or instrumentalist bloggers. We have different interests and viewpoints. And my blogstats make it clear that lots more people read me than comments. (Dear readers, please feel free to comment. I like hearing from you.)

As I mentioned, people stop blogging, or resume blogging, for all kinds of different reasons. I checked the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine the other day and looked at this blog as of late 2005. That was the first time the Wayback Machine archived Iron Tongue of Midnight; it was about a year after I launched the blog.

At the time, I linked to 38 blogs. Of those, about a dozen have gone dark in the intervening years. Scott Speigelberg's life took over, but he's now blogging again (yay!). But now I'm linking to a gigantic number of blogs, and there are hundreds more I don't link to. I Can't Keep Up.

So if at any point you feel discouraged about the state of the blogosphere - which one you happen to be reading - just wait a while. Things will change. Or, even better, read a completely different group of blogs for a while. Figure out who you really really need to read and who you just read out of habit. Then swap in some other blogs. I'll suggest a few:

• Patrick Vaz, The Reverberate Hills. Patrick is extraordinarily well read, and exceptionally interesting and thought-provoking across a range of subjects, including literature, music, and opera. He was a big fan of a couple of SF Opera production that I disliked intensely, which sure got me thinking about them. Based in the Bay Area.
• Doundou Tchil, Classical Iconoclast. Another enormously erudite writer, with interests in music, opera, film, literature, and China. Based in London.
• Zerbinetta, Likely Impossibilities. Insightful and sharp-eyed opera blogger, based currently in the NY area but has also blogged from Vienna.
• Daniel Wolf, Renewable Music. California-born composer, currently based in Frankfurt. I described him within the last 24 hours or so to a friend as a "brilliant guy you should read," because  as a composer he simply thinks about music in a completely different way from me. Deeply, deeply knowledgable about the history of experimental music in the US.
• Everyone else on my blogroll!