June 23, 2021

I GO TO WHERE MUSIC WAS BORN (reportedly J.S. Bach's last words)


VADIM BATITSKY
a.k.a. Boom Boomboomsky

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Cancel my subscription to the resurrection.
 THE DOORS.

The farewell message below was originally posted in late Spring of 2020.  It was removed a few months later for reasons discussed in the post  Ready. Aim. ...Tweet!.

That farewell post is now back to active duty with a few changes due to its post-mortem status.

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I GO TO WHERE MUSIC WAS BORN. (J.S. Bach`s last  words)

If writing one's own obituary can be fun, I must have been doing something wrong because the task struck me as annoyingly sentimental.  Perhaps it is because I thought of obituaries as summaries of notable achievements, whereas my achievements have been less than modest and were intended to benefit only myself and two other persons, the persons without whom my life would be barely distinguishable from mere existence.  (One is my wife, the other is our English Labrador.)

I was not trying to be cute.  There wasn't much to receiving a fellowship and later a humanities PhD. from a second-rate Ivy League graduate program.  Ditto for receiving a tenure-track appointment and later tenure from a regional university. This much has been done by people whose only notable qualities were assiduously cultivated verbosity and grotesquely inflated sense of self-importance.  As for getting a few papers published in selective peer-review journals, initially this may seem impressive, but not after these papers sink to the pitch-black bottom of every academic quarry lake (Google Scholar, JSTOR, etc.) because it takes more than a few citations per year to keep a paper afloat.

Not an obituary then, just a death notice.  The kind one could find in the olden days at the very end of a small town newspaper informing its readers of the passing of some beloved mother and grandmother whose cookies and pies were for many years the glory of the town's social events.

Still, why go public?

Here is why: Although much of what had been written in this blog deals with music-related subjects, it is not one of those blogs whose keepers morosely rip one commercial CD after another and just as morosely post digital copies in (what I suspect are) delusional hopes of acquiring friends (why not get a dog?), validating their lives (why not donate sperm instead?), or fighting off boredom (ever tried switching hands while masturbating?).  My blog was only my way of having fun by advertising my enthusiasms and venting my frustrations derived from encounters with art music, art criticism, journalism, academia, and a few other subjects I found worthy of my time.  At the risk of flattering myself, I took it that those few people who periodically visited my blog did so because they were interested in, if not always pleased by, what I wrote about these subjects.  And this made me feel that such readers deserved to know that this blog had become inactive not because I got bored with it or ran out of things to say, but for a biological reason beyond the reach of modern medicine.

In the meantime, I thank my readers for keeping me company over the years.
 

VADIM
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16 comments:

Remiller4 said...

My God, Boom! I can't believe this. I send all my thoughts and prayers for the best for you. God Bless.

john schott said...

When you're into music, or anything, with little or no popular appeal, people or places that care about that music shine out like beacons, illuminating the path and reminding one that others are on that path as well.
I got a lot of food for thought from this blog, and a lot a lot a lot of treasured recordings, recordings that have information that I couldn't get anywhere else.
And I also got that other thing, the connection thing.
Thank you, very sincerely.

Bill said...

Well Boom (I can't get used to Vadim) I am also a regular visitor though not much of a commentator. In saying - what can I say? - I use a cliche. There's nothing to say except thank you. After our wee falling out I have no hard feelings about it. 37 years in Fire/EMS seeing people in all stages of difficulty with 10 percent being of a life and death situation I do realize there's nothing to say as the situation does not require it. Still, it's good to say thank you to someone while there is still time to do so.

“Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”
― Marcel Proust


Go well Boom. I will think of you.

Jon said...

Thank you for a lot of entertaining and informative posts over the years — you've enriched my musical world, made me laugh and made me think (sometimes all in the same post).

Wishing you lots of Elliott Carter and good bourbon. And wishing your loved ones comfort.

ceb said...

Thank you for sharing so many extraordinary pieces and brilliant performances. Thanks also for your wit and erudtion. Wishing you the best on your next steps. Scratch your Lab behind the ears for me.

Martin said...

Thank you for your wry and pungent humour evinced by all kinds of topics, for your individual insights into (and sometimes the recordings of) the music and/or performances that provoked them. You will be missed, but not quite yet, I hope....

Colin Green said...

My thoughts are with you.

RMC said...

Thank you for your unfailing perceptiveness and your vigorous defence of thought and music against banality.

r

ingrampix said...

I'm here because fifty years ago I found the Prausnitz/CBS Carter LP almost free among the remaindered clothes in the bargain bin of my local Woolworths. I was growing up in a post-industrial backwater in north east England. My mind differed from my surroundings, always, and the Variations went straight to the heart of that. Much later I saw Carter speak at London's Barbican, on changes in perceptions of time and motion, since he was young. Here we are, decades gone in no time, but the sense of then is just as strong now as, well, then. I don't know whether we wear a love for difficult music as a badge of difference or of love or of defiant rage against wilful ignorance. Or are we 'all' (to the extent there is an all) arrogant nerds? I came to your blog from others but I didn't stay here for downloads. You do righteous curmudgeon better than anyone else in the cultural blogsphere. What matters is the warmth of connection - someone else cares enough to do this, the real and tenuous links across ponds and time and all that, with humour. Thank you for your writing, here.

Jim said...

Reading your post several weeks late I am dismayed about your health outlook. Words may fail but let me offer this antidote. I recall reading an interview with an eminent scholar who was retiring after an illustrious career. When asked what he would miss participating in his field he replied - “I will miss observing the pissing contests - trivial arguments over matters both obscure and arcane - such intense competition for stakes so low.” Your blog was never caught in that trap, and you must take pride for always writing truth to fiction. That will be missed. Thanks.

hackenboober said...

Such wit, such candour, he will be missed. vale!

Cleveland Okie (Tom Jackson) said...

Thank you for your great blog and the personal kindness you have shown to me. I have read your posts over and over again and learned a great deal from them.

Walter said...

I have enjoyed your blog for years but never posted before. I am saddened by the news but I rejoice in all that you have given to so many of us that has enriched our lives. My deep thanks to you.

Néstor Castiglione said...

What are pretty eulogies now that you're no longer with us to hear them? Nevertheless, for us ultra-dorks who continue to obsess over a hopelessly terminal musical genre, your existence mattered. My sincerest wishes of solace to your loved ones. Thank you for everything, dear Boom.

Anonymous said...

Boom,

I've been reading your blog for over a decade now. In addition to enjoying your theoretical muses on music and the art world, I have admired, perhaps to a greater degree, your hilarious and irreverent writings on life inside The Academy. "Handsome Jan" provided much-needed comic relief during my own drudge through graduate school and from my repeat encounters with pretentious, arrogant, know-it-alls. You and your writing will be missed.

Best,
P

HAL said...

👉 all were dying ✟