Envy...

Over at Zoilus, Carl Wilson is blogging about the Pop Conference in Seattle.
Every year he does this I am struck with envy - and while I generally have tried to move past my music envy (so much cooler, more popular, more fun blah blah), Carl's description of the event always brings it back.

It’s a kind of weekend retreat where journalists, authors, historians, musicologists, DJs, theorists and, yes, musicians experiment with ways to talk about popular music that might do justice to its value as human experience, its often troubled and troubling place in cultural exchange, and its never-ceasing novelty, invention and frequent blatant absurdity as a kind of moving-parts plasticene model for how to mobilize feeling usefully in a painfully pleasurable world.

This quixotic spirit has bred its own sub-genres of presentations: They’re performative, even competitively so, ... and while dense, knotty thinking is fine (at least by most of us), mere deconstructive games seldom get traction — there’s a collective conscience that’s listening for a socially productive reassessment or challenging ethical core." - Full post

and if you haven't got his book about Celine Dion and taste, you should. It's remarkable. You can get it at local bookstores like Pages and This ain't the Rosedale Library.