That's it! The only ism I want to come out of your mouths is jism. Overacademic Bullshit Must Die.

the potential helpfulness of such a word — of any jargon word — is that it compacts all into one place a lot of apparently different activities/concepts not otherwise so gathered: and the gathering may be laborious and you don't want to do it all over again, so you use the word as a shortcut for "go see the work [x] did categorising/arguing this, which is very telling, and i wd only spoil it if i tried to summarise"

i am v.naughty when it comes to citing ppl as if it's obvious to all what they think and say: this is (partly) because i am pathologically bad at precis, and get in a terrible panic if i am asked to summarise a paragraph ("unless i read every word ever written in the english language, i do not truly understand this sentence and must let it stand for itself")

i am not in fact quite so naughty when it comes to words like "postmodernism", which i mainly think are failed attempts at genre-marketing and NOT handy codifications of related ideas

i think the shortcut is fair enough (explaining things everyone present already knows can be tedious and offputting — or just look silly cf "the popular beat combo supergrass"), but i think asking for the longer version is completely fair enough also

I suppose my only real worry these days is the (self-imposed) idea that everything is up for grabs and has to be listened to and talked about. (In terms of angle? Honestly, after dealing with theory for years, I don't want to think what I'm supposed to be doing on that front.)

mark is basically OTM. It goes, for me, as simple as this: yes, JBR, you're right, the onus of understanding shouldn't fall entirely on the writer as then everything written, ever, would resemble a Dick & Jane book. However, the reader, while choosing to enter the discourse, isn't the one choosing to start the discourse, or trying to explain a greater idea or point to anyone. Ergo, the writer has more of a responsibility to write in a fashion that is best suited towards those who they are trying to get their point across to; ie. write in a lucid, explicatory, engaging fashion otherwise you will lose your audience quickly.

If your audience is other rock critics, then who gives a fuck? If your audience is the general public of, just for example, Spin magazine*, then I think you should give a fuck about things like angle or clearness. It entirely depends on who you are writing for--I think that the style of writing Miccio is specifically talking about is better suited towards books than for the Village Voice.

* Note that using this as an example is not remotely an endorsement of the idea that Spin is in some way a bastion of intellectualism; merely that this was the first popular publication that came to mind!

everything is up for grabs and has to be listened to and talked about

Change "has" to "can" and I'm with you, Ned.

The only thing that has made me scratch my head is that I can't think one bit of currently popular culture in movies, music, whatever that Sterling dislikes.

Change "has" to "can" and I'm with you, Ned.

Rah.

(note to self: one day get to page two of being and time maybe you big faker)

Yeah...this is kind of what Miccio was saying (I hope he doesn't mind me putting words in his mouth). Not specifically about Sterling for me, but that phenomenon--that writing like this is somehow an achievement. It's like the difference between having a conversation with Chuck Eddy and a number of Eddy/Xgau/Whomever wannabes: You talk to Chuck and he might say something completely inexplicable, but when you say, "WHAT?" he will explain it in an enthusiastic, engaging manner and work the listener into what he's trying to express. You talk to certain other folx and the same thing occurs, but they don't go on to explain in an engaging, friendly fashion--they kind of smirk, like, "Figured you wouldn't know what I meant." Which is just kind of dumb: why bother attempting to put forth ideas at all if you only want to share them with other people who have the same experience and knowledge as you?

Writing is for making points, not scoring them.

if there's NOTHING for the reader to do, then brains will not get engaged (however an awful lot of academic discourse is actually extremely stylised, mannered and samey: its difficulty entirely superficial, like haxorspeak)

(it's sunny out and i'm sick.)

Not acceptable.
Think of the carpet cleaning bills.

Yeah, but would you yell at him from a car? I would!

When you read stuff at college, you sometimes get bright text full of ideas and well written. More of the time though, you get some small ideas appallingly written. Very frequently, it's worse: cliche rewritten as gibberish.

So, it's natural to distrust stuff that seems "academic".

Most people, especially here, can take a bit of braininess.

Some people, especially here, can detect faux-braininess, yes?

Without any examples (and I didn't spot any as I skim-read), this thread gets nowhere. That's where it is. Where is the end?

People tend to yell Miccioooooo from cars at me, so ya know. And I'd think right now it would neither positively or negatively affect the world much if I got trampled to death at a Bizkit concert. Plus there's always my legacy to worry about...

The End Is The Beginning Is The The End

Sorry. I couldn't resist.

Actually, in this context it means nothing. Its a pun that has to be said out loud to make any sense. (Although the reader would have to assume your last name is pronounced Mish-EE-OH.)

Now why does this matter? Coz to me often "theorists" and rock musicians are often finding different ways of addressing the *same thing* and so often indirectly addressing one another. One way to kill the self-satisfied patrician role of academia is to actually try to bring it into *dialogue* with the things it addresses.

One of the more thought-provoking/useful things about Meltzer was that for him philosophy was the question and ROCK!!!! was the answer. Hendrix's famous logical connective "A public hair B" etc. But that's really just a varient of left-hegelianism. (which is another reason knowing theory is good, because it helps you spot old debates in new clothes).

Another problem is that sometimes cryptic references are meant as jokes and not as k-brill. insights. So plenty of times there's no *point* in explaining them if someone doesn't get them because the explanation kills the humor and without the humor there's nothing left. I know I do this IRL fairly often, but mainly w/r/t pop-ephermia from the 80s or early 90s as opposed to with highfalutin' theorists.