The Pain of Music

I have previously written in this space about “dread.” I then referred to a more general foreboding—which still occasionally visits me, in spite of my improved circumstances. I accept these visitations as inevitable. There may be no help for them—or, at best, I could spend an exorbitant amount of money to a credentialed stranger to convince me, over a course of treatment lasting several years, to embrace impending doom rather than letting it bug me. (“Letting it bug me” is a much cheaper method of addressing the abyss.) No, my dread du jour actually arises from my newly exalted status. Now that my position as publisher of The Syncopated Times has accorded me a measure of influence in my chosen field (and believe me, I never saw that coming), I live in something like blithering terror of expressing an opinion that brands me, for all the world to see, a philistine. I used to express ignorant opinions with gusto. I was just a guy then. Now I'm an authority—and having to say what I really think about certain matters of sensitive interest scares the prunes out of me. I may spend weeks at a time pretending to know about art but not admitting to know what I like. But this is not about art. It's about music. Oh, boy. And how. I am blessed with the happy facility of being able to like almost anything, if it's fairly good of its kind. That is, except certain things. Re