Beauty is Imperfection

(Originally posted Monday, March 10, 2008 )

I’ve been getting an unusually large number of hits lately at ER Salo Deguierre’s page. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the attention, but the audience for my music has always been — and let me put this delicately — very selective since I started posting it last year. I wonder what’s caused the increase?

–*Is it that my one obsessed fan is going there 10 times a day?

–*Is it that my music has hit a raw nerve with those who crave the sound of a drum machine?

–*Is it that people have mistaken me for American Idol’s Carly Smithson, a.k.a., “Carly Plant” (her name over at Vote for the Worst, whose posters believes she is but a record company ringer)?

–*Is it that people crave the sound of a horrible singer, because it always makes them feel better about themselves?

–*Is it that music lifts up the soul? Is it that all music is good and any expression of it, even mine, is considered by those it touches to be a bona fide work of the spirit?

–*Is it just that they like the blue color of the page?

–*Is it that somebody wants to sue me because they think my song sounds like theirs and that I ripped them off?

–*Is it that somebody is cribbing all the notes of the songs so that they may rip me off?

–*Is it that the picture on the home page creates a compelling allure of mystery, offering a kind of willful anonymity that forces the listener to rethink such preconceived constructs like artistic authorship and ownership, and thus denies the exaggerated subjective viewpoint of rock music in particular and modernism in general?

–*Or is it that my real picture appears in the next link, and then you can say “Oh, there he is!”

–*Is it that the lo-fi revolution has started, and people will no longer be force fed music they hear on the radio, but rather they will seek out the things they listen to themselves, creating a grassroots cottage industry of artists and artisans?

–*Or is it just a mistake, and 11 people wandered onto my page by accident?

It doesn’t matter. I like the attention.

My wife and I are still getting through boxes and trying to find new furniture after moving last week. We’re still not hitting on all 8s, but maybe in a few days, things should be more like normal. After that, I hope to start writing frequent blogs again.