Nr. 100

I am sure it will not be of interest to many of you, but this is blog entry nr. 100. 2.5 years of writing an average of one entry every week, apart from holidays. Nearly 7300 page views from - in descending order - the Netherlands, the US, Germany, Russia, the UK, France, Latvia, the Ukraine, China, Sweden and many more countries.

I started this blog for a reason. I was writing a PhD dissertation and thought a form of 'public thinking' might help me to develop my ideas. And actually it has worked well. Not that my thinking became 'public' because of readers' reactions (it did happen, though - thank you), but rather because the public character of the blog kind of ordered me to write a bit about music every week, thus forcing me to put thoughts on paper. It kept me writing and thinking, and some of the thoughts have eventually ended up in the dissertation.

This morning I sent the dissertation to the committee which is going to judge whether the research I did is original  enough to grant me the title of doctor. We'll find out in due time. The rather new illustration of the parachute guy you find somewhere on my blog actually is an artistic  interpretation of the result of the PhD; study the illustration a bit and you know all you will have to know. In the meantime, there is the feeling of 'job done'. If they would ask me to write another dissertation I would accept immediately, but for now it's over. So it feels fitting this is a celebratory nr. 100.

I could therefore stop this blog. But I guess I'll continue. Because writing about music in this way has made me think, which I value. So let's see what happens next week on this place. After a remark of a friend I guess I could shift my attention away from the 'quality-critique' of the past few weeks, and find something new to write about. I'll do my best (although I have become rather fond of the idea of quality-critique).

At the same time, there is this feeling I described some weeks ago: a certain tiredness of all this argumentation going on in my blog, and my head. So I am thinking of starting yet another blog, in another place. A blog in which there will be no argumentation at all, just pure description. A blog unrelated to music, although music may figure in it.

A blog because, now that I know that writing can make you think, I am curious about the reverse: can you also write in order to stop the thinking?