Anti-Climacus

HALF ACRE:



Back when I was on myspace, many years ago, there was a brief period of time when all my Michigan friends had this as their song. For me, it is the memory of one week in August 2007, the lone CD I had for a week spent driving between my sister's house and my father's, somewhere up in Illinois. It makes me think of a lot of things: that week; the evenings one summer I used to bike around the farms out in the county; the feeling of Michigan as a place and myself as part of it (I remember once following the pattern of Stephen Daedelus in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man); many lovely evenings spent walking the rivers around the Tridge and discussing politics, and poetry, and art. Rabbit Songs, whence this song, is a really lovely album, but its beauty is all sadness and loss.

Long ago I had a conversation with one of my friends in the department, on my belief that you don't ultimately pick a dissertation topic--it picks you (maybe this is only true for political theorists). I think the same thing is true for art: one begins with a feeling that can't be explained; one develops a better or worse language to explain why that feeling happens, but there's something in it that defies rational explanation.