Should I just fuck off? Defend your Indefensible.

I don't feel I know you at all well, but what you've written here makes you sound 10 times more interesting than someone who just likes whatever it's cool to like.

Change your name all of the time and attack somebody every now and again by calling them "gay".

See, problem solved!

PS. You're gay.

Tom, if I were gay, you'ld be the first person I'd ask to suck m* d1c6.

conclusion: stay, dude.

As for all the rockcrit on the other board, remember: "Do not ask for the meaning, ask for the use."

Well I thought it was just some play on the Friday Flirting thread and not quite that serious, but I can't say that it seems at all irrational to me...

Hang around, Michael. You are interesting.

This is a difficult question, though. I don't think there is that much that is valuable and true in criticism that is objective. There may be some things ('that singer is out of tune in six places on this track'), but turning such facts into artistic judgement is problematic, since you can often argue that these factual apparent flaws are actually good things. I value good criticism greatly, on a few levels. If the writer is good enough, or if I know them well enough, it can be a useful guide for me towards things I might appreciate, and indeed away in other cases. It can be entertaining to read, often more entertaining than the work it is discussing - I would much rather read a major Mark S piece on his beloved Queen Of The Damned than actually watch it again, and Kogan's article spinning off from Disco Tex's Get Dancing (is it still up somewhere?) gave me more pleasure than the record has. That's an example of a piece that opened my mind up, made me think in new ways about aspects of music and indeed other forms, which leads me to the main apologia for criticism, I think: that it enhances your understanding of the work and by extension the form, or even art in general. In my experience this is certainly true, and very valuable. I've heard a lot of people say that over-analysing things (they mean any serious attempt at criticism) sucks out the joy to be had, but that has never happened to me.

I used to be professionally involved in comic books, including editing a magazine about them. I was trying to advance the form of comic criticism in the UK, which given the level it was at, wasn't much of a challenge. I thought I was doing good work at the time, and while I wouldn't necessarily wish to stand behind much of what I wrote 15 years on, it was serious enough to be an example here - a critique or review (I won't try to separate those things now) sometimes ran to a couple of thousand words. I also read all the good criticism of comics, and plenty that wasn't good, that I could find. It enhanced my appreciation of comics on an intellectual level, but I also got far more out of them on other levels, and enjoyed them more. It's been my experience since - I wrote an article for FT some months ago on Al Green's How Can You Mend A Broken Heart, and analysing that in some depth did nothing but good to my enjoyment of it.

Another extension for this is exemplified in the parallel work I did editing comics: not only did I do a better job in selection and amendment because of my improved judgement, I attracted people (including one person who had never so much has submitted anywhere else) because they trusted my judgement and understanding. I am just as convinced that good criticism can make a contribution towards improving an art form. I think that the skills are different, so the numbers of people moving from being a good critic to being a good practitioner is realtively small, but there are plenty of good examples (and the quality of practitioners as critics varies widely too), but the indirect influence isn't really measurable, but I know from my own experience and from talking to comic writers and artists that there are effects.

I think that's a pretty good justification: useful to people as a guide, interesting in its own right aside from its referents, enhancing enjoyment, improving the art form in question. That there is no objective rightness or wrongness about most anything involved with art is something we have to live with, I think.

Michael you always have intelligent things to say.

stay michael

Since when is this irrational?? (Martin beat me to my own joke)

(I made it anyway)

(I refuse to not do things I shouldn't just because someone else did them first. Except in certain arenas. Let's not go there...)

Anyway, I'd miss you, please stay.

Sorry for the maudlin whining, folks, and for the drunken misspelling, Ken L, or should I say, quenelle, 'twas merely vin triste.

But seriously you're the best. I always look forward to your cosmopolitan brand of je ne sais quoi.