And as you should know, you’re probably the only one who’s read most of the Songbook besides a few others here and my wife. Who knows if I’ll be able to get the Songbook turned to a real book, and thus be regarded by more than ten pomocons as knowing a lot (and too much) about music. I’m sorry if thinking about it is bugging you of late…but it would be helpful to know what about it is specifically is bothering you.

Inevitably, I’m going to piss people off talking about music, because to do so with any seriousness requires me at some point to give a “big no” to something. And to insult someone’s tastes.

Look, I am terminally hipster, I get pretentiously lost in the song-world, all that, but I do at the end of the day make way for the fact that tastes are never entirely rational, and not worth fretting about so much. I remember at an InterVarsity Christian Fellowship meeting I was at once, and there was this staff worker from Occidental College(maybe he knew Barack!), who like me, was something of a hipster music-wise. And he just starting going off on this 80s Christian Contemporary star Amy Grant, and in the presence of a couple of folks who liked her. I hated that. I hate it when hipsters do that. No, I didn’t like Amy Grant that much either, but she wasn’t horrible (say, “You Light Up My Life” horrible, or Sammy Hagar horrible–see, I can’t help myself!) and why did this guy want to rain on their parade? If all other music were to be lost, we’d all be grateful for a surviving Amy Grant recording. Or a Smashing Pumpkins one. What the hell, even a Sammy Hagar one.

Now John, what’s bugging you? You give me nothing to swing at here–you just say my rock v. rock n’ roll distinction is wrong. Give me a three-point, or sure, like me, a fifteen-point, post explaining what seems wrong to you about the Songbook, but kindly leave out the insufferable and pretentious charges. Or just say you’re getting tired of it, and leave it there.

And now something about you, John. 19 times out of 20 when I read your posts I think: wise man, good man, gotta have drinks with him some day. But once in a blue moon I read something from you that seems in a kind of rant-mode, and also usually hard for me to understand it, not just the anger, but what the subject at hand simply is.

Such is this one. Indeed, I almost want to email Word Press, and say “warning, John Presnall impersonator has gotten into Pomocon, stolen the password.” You’ve had nary a critical word on the Songbook, and then suddenly, and during a month where I haven’t done much with it, BLAMMO!! But I know you have these moments…

So let me have it, my friend, if you will. I need criticism of the Songbook, but in a manner more workable for us than this. Sincerely, Carl.

The best sort of criticism rides the edge between profound insight and lunatic nonsense, with “knowing pretension” an absolute must. See, e.g., Lipstick Traces. Else you wouldn’t learn anything, and certainly wouldn’t gain any previously unrealized insight.

You’ll be much the better for it.