A quarter to nine on a Sunday morning here in the studio, and I'm feeling quite contemplative, almost meditative for some reason. Perhaps that's what I'll do in a few minutes, when the hour block of BBC World Service kicks in and I feel free to lock the door and let the station run unmanned; maybe I'll drive back to my place, hitch myself up into the lotus position and quiet my mind for a bit, acheive a scintilla of inner tranquility and mindfulness. Or on the other hand, maybe I'll drive across town to BK for an egg and cheese muffin instead, my second breakfast after the bagel and two slices of cold pizza I rammed down my throat at 5:20, before coming in here under the cover of darkness. It really is a toss-up right now.

Bildung - A German term meaning 'education', in the sense of the formation and cultivation of an individual's spiritual and intellectual qualities (as opposed to merely formal schooling - see the Bildungsroman, vs. the Erziehungsroman). The point of this blog, if it has one, is to be a Bildungs-artifact, a Bildungs-blog, if that's possible (and why wouldn't it be?) In a few weeks I'm beginning the last, highest and most difficult stage of my education - but the long trek to the doctorate that I take inside the classroom seems to be ancillary, almost beside the point. That part will inevitably take care of itself, because it has to. Follow the rules, do the work, observe the many clearly delineated and unspoken conventions and structures, and you should get your Ph. D; that much is simple. But it's what goes on outside of that - the slow, ongoing, and with time increasingly concentrated process of mental, cultural, spiritual and moral (let's not be scared of those four words!) development, encapsulated in the term Bildung - that interests me most. That's what this blog thing is bound to be about, as soon as I find out how to do it.



Last night I went out to see Frank Jordan play at the Blue Gator. Not a guy but a band, and a pretty damn good one at that. Out of Sacramento, they're recording here in town (down the hall from where I sit right now, as a matter of fact); when they're not doing that, they're nearly killing themselves (and ensuring tragically-unfulfilled rock hero status) by flipping their van on its side and ramming it into a tree late at night (that, I found out, was how the van was 'murdered'). Now they're vanless and stuck in Ohio - which is good for us, if nothing else. Lead singer Mike Visser's got a authentically great rock voice; it's truly high praise to say he evokes Jeff Buckley, but listen to tunes like "Always Temporary" and "Z" and tell me you don't hear that same sort of hair-raising, inimitably beautiful keening thing in his sound.

For being pretty far from anything (and that's to say that Columbus is 'anything'), we get some decent bands coming through here. In the past three weeks alone (and in the middle of summer, with half the normal population) we've gotten The High Strung and now Frank Jordan - two acts on the rise who people should hear a lot more from soon.