Dear All,

glasses glasses said “Hey, let’s start doing weekly blog columns!” I said “Dang, that sounds like a whole lotta work. I’m just one man. But okay.”

“What’s the topic of your column gonna be?” Glasses asked. “Geez… topic? I dunno,” I answered.

I thought about it:

I am horrible at reading and watching the news, so current events are out. I’m a first year schoolteacher in grad school, so I don’t really have time to make many local events (at least until the glorious, glorious summer). I generally cook three-meals-worth of spaghetti and sauce at the beginning of each week, so I don’t think anyone wants to scrape an opinion off of my muted palette. I’m not a pet-owner, home-owner, boat-owner, business-owner, automobile-owner or gun-owner, yet.

Hmmmmmmm… what about music? Music was perched at the front of my mind, but music seemed so, I don’t know, obvious. I like to read music columns but I usually kind of secretly hate the people who write them and imagine them as 28-year-old English B.A.’s, with like, a dog and a vegan girlfriend and horn-rimmed glasses and a Neutral Milk Hotel first-press vinyl that cost $85. But alas, what else do I know anything about?

So the dial fell on music—but not in a traditional sense. This column is centered around one song every week and has no rules or regulations other than that. It can be a short story inspired by that song, general musings on the state of social welfare motivated by that song, remembrances of things passed triggered by that song—anything, as long as the song is the centerpiece on the kitchen table.

I hope you enjoy reading and listening (as the mp3 is posted along with the text) and think along with me about your own experiences with particular songs, and I strongly encourage hate-mail and more importantly, submissions from others. Maybe this could be like a, a thing—people mailing in songs with stories, songs with ideas, songs with reminiscence. I don’t know.

Love,
Smith