Well, this is to be the discovery blog, eh? I don't know what to write in particular, but I could just start with the idea of the personal essay. I guess since I always wrote songs, I never really wrote journal entries. When I conferenced with Dr. Kirklighter, I told her that my personal outlet was always my songs: like a journal entry, they always stand for how I felt or thought at a particular time. I'd like to think they are a little digressive like Montaigne, too.

But what is the personal? Even in the personal essays we've read, as telling as they've been, they often have a distance to them that doesn't quite the author. Another good example is The Squid and the Whale. Though Baumbach based the characters on his family, they were still fictionalized portraits. I tried to think about whether or not I did this with my songs, and I guess I do. Usually those songs arise from a particularly intense or meaningful situation for me, and I always have the impetus to write about them, but as banana stated, I sometimes don't have a purpose. Therefore, it takes a long while until I actually get around to writing them. By then, they've become barnacle encrusted with whatever other life experience I've had since the initial inspiration, and the meaning isn't the same. So instead of putting myself into that song, which would be difficult as it seems we never can remember how the most important times in our lives actually felt, I create a character. This now seems totally pretentious, but go with me here. The character is like any narrator/mask you put on. He/she serves as an avatar for you, or for feelings that you've had, or is symbolic of something in your past. The list goes on forever.

After that, though, you still need a purpose, a theme to direct the song towards (which was hard to explain to my Composition classes when they were doing their first project. I told them "It's like writing a song about nothing. You can't do it, unless you're R.E.M." I got blank stares). If you don't have this, the song falls apart. I suppose its the same with the personal essay. Even if they do digress, as Montaigne's certainly do, there has to be some overarching theme. But of course, there are those songs that come immediately as a raw, emotional response from your soul, which pretty much negates everything I just wrote.

I dig Sirius Satellite radio. Just today, I discovered a station dedicated solely to Bruce Springsteen. Magic.