Shoulder Shrug

So... the most famous classical music critic on the internet just seemed to obliquely admit that a sideswipe he made at another music writer he didn't mention by name was me (or at least me among many others) when I obliquely sent a message that was basically 'message received.' After five minutes of being insulted when I saw the video, I'm actually kind of flattered. I have no idea why he'd care what a pygmy like me would ever think unless he's far more insecure about his position at the top of the field than he lets on, a position that is in no way threatened. He's certainly good at what he does, I've always been amused by him, and even if I disagree with 60% of everything he represents, I've often been enlightened. There are many things he does extraordinarily well, and in many ways he's earned tremendous respect from me - not that he should care...

He's also the establishment who clearly thinks that everything in the music world is just fine, and I think people like him are playing the fiddle as Rome burns and couldn't care less that music lovers of my generation may have have no place to hear the music we love after he leaves. But no matter what my disagreements, and whatever we think of each other's aesthetic stance (or in his case, the competence of ce qu'il appelle soi disant colleagues like me), it strikes me as extraordinary that he would care what 'soi disant' critics on the internet think when his audience positively dwarfs anyone else's. He can have the 'music critic' definition all to himself as far as I'm concerned. I'm not a music critic, I've never confused myself with a music critic. I'm a music lover and my soi disant designation is as a musician and writer, not critic. All I care about is my creative work which I may not even be talented enough to do well, but I write about music because I love it, I have no objective method, and who played the tam-tam at the right moment with the right sound and volume does not generally strike me as germane to aesthetic quality or meaning. I just write about what captures my fancy, and I'm more interested in loving it than hating it. I have no interest in being a gatekeeper who 'keeps standards high', I think that's a kind of decadence. Once listening to music becomes more an activity about 'how' than the 'why', the essential purpose is completely lost - it's just a fetish and a club. The music is here for us to be moved by, not to keep track of the mistakes.

If he thinks what he does, or what any of us do in the field of music writing, is so serious that takes can be objective pronouncements, I don't know how to answer that, and I probably shouldn't answer it at all. Obviously we're doing two different things and he mistook it for something at all similar, but what amazes me is the thin skin of a person who dishes it out for his very living but can't abide the thought of people having even tiny issues with his pronouncements without trying to start the classical music writing equivalent of a rap battle with people in the field so insignificant that he can easily eat us for breakfast. That is Trump-like behavior. If this is just a way of saying 'stay away from my page,' sure, I have no problem with that and that's what I plan on doing from now on anyway. But it's just so stupid. It's like what Kissinger said about academia: 'The politics are so fraught because the stakes are so low.' If he wants to be undisputed king of his particular hill, he can have it, nobody else wants it.