Hello again, dear readers,
In February, I made a decision to step away from this blog (at the time, I assumed permanently), based on what I perceived of as my own self-inflicted pressure to produce regular and frequent posts. I wanted more leisure and lack of obligation to the blog to enjoy time spent with family and friends, to work more on my music, song-writing and recording, and to be able to enjoy the books I read and shows I watch for the sheer pleasure of it, rather than as fodder for commentary and analysis.
These were good and important insights about myself, and the process and demands of the kind of writing I’d done for the blog over the course of a year. And as hoped, I have definitely enjoyed the time away from it since February, and have made good use of the time.
On that note, there’s so much news to share! For one thing, I just went online with my music website – I've put a link to it on the Favorite Links list. There you can find information about my music and music videos, and a little about me and the musical side of my artistic and creative life. It’s also a hub for linking to my artist profiles on music streaming sites, my social media accounts, my YouTube channel and the like. I’ll also have a blog there, about what I’m doing with my music, and other specifically music-related topics of interest.
Most importantly, check out the site's Contact
page – from there, you can join my email list, and if you like, send me a short message. I’ll use this email
list to send out occasional news about my music, and also my future writing
projects. I promise the emails won’t
be a burden – I’ll only use it occasionally, and every email will have an “Unsubscribe”
link so you can quit whenever you want if you’re tired of it.
But wait, there’s more! After releasing seven singles to digital streaming in 2021 and 2022, with videos, I’ve been working hard all this year writing and recording five new songs to combine with the others on my first album, Strangers. The album will be released on Friday, September 29th, and will be available on all music streaming services, plus in a limited run CD release.
Despite all this other music-related activity and focus this year, though, it occurred to me recently that perhaps it might be possible (and rewarding) to resume The Memory Cache blog, but on different terms (for myself, as well as the readers).
It’s unfortunate that the nature of the attention economy and its imperatives make anyone with a web site assume that they have to produce constantly, or their site will “go stale”, and no one will bother to look at it anymore. That was certainly a major factor for me in deciding to give it up in February – it just felt like way too much pressure to produce, to keep people interested and checking the site for frequent new posts.
But with time to reflect, I’ve realized how unnecessary that approach is. The remedy, I realized, is simple – I just need to approach this blog as a place to continue posting and sharing whatever information and musings I think are useful, fun or particularly significant to other people too, but only when the mood strikes me. In other words, the blog site and my writing for it could be much more about quality than quantity, passion than productivity. It doesn’t have to be an all or nothing proposition.
With that in mind, I’m happy to announce I have decided to begin posting new entries here again starting in the fall of 2023. However, this time, I will only post when I think there’s something especially important or exceptional about the content or issues I’m covering. That means I may only write an article every month or tw0 – I’ll see as I go along how often I’m inspired. But when I am, you’ll be able to read it here on the site again.
Of course, I understand that it’s hard to follow a blog that only changes infrequently, but that’s probably okay. You’ll only need to check it occasionally to see what’s new, especially since (like a monthly magazine) I’m not trying to provide up-to-the-minute news flashes, but rather less time-sensitive interpretation and opinion.
And with my emailing list up and running (don’t forget to sign up on my new web site on the Contact page), I can and will send a bulletin out whenever there’s a new post, so you won’t have to check the site at all in between posts if you're on the email list. You’ll know when there’s something new.
Looking forward to writing to you (and for you) again soon.