Re/searching for an audience

Catching up, I was pleased to notice these two posts. Ralph Locke at Dial M asks the pertinent question "Why do we do research?" (which echoes previous posts elsewhere about why we blog, right?). The answer may be here.

Jeremy Denk writes about the urge to share our musical experiences and the difficulty therein. I think that's precisely why we do this research. First it has to engage us enough to make it worth the effort, but more importantly, we cling to the hope that there's someone out there who shares this interest. Someone you could sit down with and talk to for hours. And maybe you will. But until you make it known where your passions lie, how are you going to find them? It's like opening up the conversation, and for that I appreciate scholarship that poses questions, not just answers, that makes an attempt to communicate beyond whatever frame, not to mention drawing you in with evocative writing. I've always said the best conference papers and articles are the ones that make me want to go listen to music, and the best performances are the ones that make me want to talk about them or write about them.

I have some such performances, but that will come another day.