Inspired by Kim, Patti and James: Blogjune 2015

I’ll begin with the usual apology. I cannot believe that I’ve not written a post since December 31. I’ve definitely thought about it. Perhaps I confused the posts I wrote for the work blog with my own personal blog. Either way, it’s the 1st of June and here I am looking down the barrel of 30 posts.

To prepare I’ve read back over my posts from last year. They were all random topics with the only thing that connected them being written my me. Good enough I guess but I want to make more of a concerted effort for 2015.

This year I’ve been reading memoirs and autobiographies. Nothing unusual there. They seem to be my genre of choice most of the time. Three have stood out: Girl in a Band by Kim Gordon, Just Kids by Patti Smith and Instrumental by James Rhodes. Each of them about music, each of them alternatively joyful and devastatingly heart breaking, each of them inspiring. Overcoming obstacles is clearly what they have in common. What they were really about for me was the central, absolutely vital, role music, art, writing, culture has in life – how the arts are life and can be absolutely transcendent when there is all sorts of other crap going down.

Now clearly I am no Kim, Patti or James but I can’t imagine a life without music. So for blogjune this is my theme. I’m not sure what kind of posts I will come up with. What I do hope is that in thinking and writing about music for 30 days I might do two things.

1. Create some kind of body of writing about music and me

2. Document that body of writing in a single place. Here. On this blog.

Now, Wendy I here you cry (or not…depending on your level of interest and flair for the dramatic)….isn’t blogjune supposed to be connected to library and information professional issues? Well, yes. But at the moment I don’t work in a library. I work at a public art gallery. But in a somewhat tenuous link think of my blogjune project as curating a little online archive of personal posts about music. Isn’t that something LIS professionals might do?

And so I conclude my first post by saying that as I write I am listening to internet radio station TunnRocks (@TunnRocks) where each Wednesday night I prepare a 2 hour playlist of fave songs that mean something to me. What a joyful part of my life this weekly challenge has become.

See you tomorrow.

4 Comments »

4 Responses to “Inspired by Kim, Patti and James: Blogjune 2015”

  1. Sam says:

    I’ve also read the Patti Smith and Kim Gordon books in the last 18 months or so – loved both, and I am not really a big reader of biographies. The third one in my trilogy was Viv Albertine’s Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys – you might enjoy that too! I did not know much about James Rhodes until I read a Guardian article about him recently. The book sounds very harrowing, and then to have all that drama around getting it published too…

  2. Wendy Davis says:

    The James Rhodes book was a little heavy going but an important story to read I think. And in the end so inspiring that he has found music a way out the mire. I had ordered it ages ago and then wondered what the hold up was with its release. I will definitely check out your recommendation!

  3. Kate says:

    I definitely don’t think the posts have to be connected to the profession. My post today will be a meander through my reading-for-fun list.

  4. Wendy Davis says:

    I need to catch up on that post Kate!

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