As if Anno Domini 2025 were not fraught enough with rumors of war and the vain, blustering hubris that ensures a constant level of High Alert, I received another not-so-subtle reminder of my mortality last Friday, June 20, when I bit down on a granola bar and my back molar replied, “Not today, my man.” Since this always seems to happen on a Friday I had the pleasure of enduring our unprovoked attack on another country this weekend in my own world of dental Shock and Awe.
Happily, as I write this I am momentarily pain-free and may relate that a visit to the periodontist today reveals that the tooth is cracked and will have to be extracted. This is nothing like five years ago when I had to publish two issues of The Syncopated Times in oral agony. I have almost finished the layout of this July issue and it should not be any worse than usual. But I do think back to that time and consider that I felt the impetus to find someone else to pick up the baton. My thought, at age 58, was that I did not want to torture myself with single-handedly producing this publication at age 60. I made inquiries, which went nowhere.
Now I am 63 and still at it. I feel like a million—or at least a hundred. I am older and (big hint) broker than I wanted to be in this chair. Some of my readers, who are 85 and still doing the Charleston, laugh at my affected fragility. I might as well be a Regency valetudinarian, clutching at my flannels. If you want to envision me as a withering fop, that’s your prerogative. Though the paper bag refuses to budge, just know that I am punching as hard as I can, out of obligation.
It’s definitely time for me to scour the planet again for a successor, to take possession (and the duties attendant thereto) as soon as possible. I need to find someone with an abiding love of this music, the basic language competency required for writing and editing, the financial cushion to keep the enterprise going, and the naïveté to believe that it is at all possible.
I can just about rule out working musicians as candidates—since they are already doing something difficult that they love. Also, their efforts make this paper worthwhile. No musician is foolhardy enough to want to be an editor. They are already living their best possible life, even if it means eating ramen several days a week. What is a comma compared to a cadenza? One may labor in the apostrophe mine, still eating ramen but enjoying it less. Plus, they only have to know a dozen jokes, passed down from previous generations. I am contractually bound to make mine up on a month-to-month basis.
Nor is a professional journalist likely to want this gig. They see it for what it is—a Sisyphean folly and a low-circulation money-pit. Though they have been downsized from their local newsroom as daily papers and local websites are increasingly written by AI and laid out in Mumbai, the lure of owning a small free-wheeling publication where you get to say pretty much what you think (within reason) and there is no Jeff Bezos to tell you to knock it off is not likely to beguile a struggling graduate of the Newhouse School. If they had the money to take over The Syncopated Times, they’d drop journalism entirely and sit on their back decks writing their novels.
The pros are likewise eating ramen seven times a week and enduring insults from the President more often than that. And I am fully cognizant of the privilege of having a private platform from which to launch the thoughts I cannot possibly keep to myself—and I would appreciate it more if it were not killing me (though some would say not fast enough). What I realize now is that I was, in fact, the perfect person to take over The American Rag. I was neither a trained journalist nor a professional musician. I had no credentials whatsoever. What I had was an interest in everything, a certain amount of writing ability, and a particular affection for 1920s and 1930s music (though many other kinds of music as well). This paper needs another one of me to keep going, preferably one that has access to ready cash.
What I am looking for is a dilettante. Or, let me be kinder and say polymath. But you can’t spell “polymath” without “math” and mine doesn’t add up. There is no accounting for some people and I am one of those people. Without putting a dime in my own pocket I need about $4,000 a month to stay in print. I could say that I am working for no money out of the goodness of my heart and that The Syncopated Times is purely a labor of love but I will spare you the fulsome self-congratulatory rhetoric. I keep toiling away for free because I am afraid of being embarrassed and getting yelled at.
Those who read Joe Bebco’s brief item below the fold on the front page understand that he is looking to share some of his duties in promoting the paper with mass emails and on social media. He’s also interested in allowing someone to take over The Final Chorus and Festival Rounsup columns. But he assures me he intends on maintaining the website for the rest of his natural life. When I first acquired the paper in December 2015, I considered that it might be a career for him, also. Unfortunately, I can’t pay him anywhere near what his labor is worth. However, each month I have to pay contributors (ones who don’t waive payment) as well as the printer and the USPS. (Please consider a tax-deductible contribution to tinyurl.com/TSTgofundme.)
If you are a dilettante, a polymath, or a Renaissance Man or Woman of means and think it might be fun to run a newspaper, please get in touch. I won’t discourage you.
Andy Senior is the Publisher of The Syncopated Times and on occasion he still gets out a Radiola! podcast for our listening pleasure.
