Last week I posted an entry in this “From the Editor” column in which I praised and recommended the Wexford Festival Opera, discouraged opera first-timers from attending something in Dublin, and broadly condemned the Dublin gig scene.

My arguments against opera in Dublin (for first-timers; I am for opera in Dublin) and against the live music in Dublin may have been weak and illegitimate, but I doubt anyone was surprised by them.

I admit that, in order to say something at all about the gig scene in Ireland, I had to plumb the depths of my indignation. I do think music by the bands I’ve seen here is without exception all the things I stated in that post. But I felt this way in Austin, Texas, in the 1990s, and everywhere else I have lived – even London.

I wish I had not said anything, because I have given the impression I am so angry about incompetence and pretension in the gig scene that I had to attack it. In fact, I do not care at all.

I also really like going to the opera in Dublin, but anyone who saw Don Giovanni at the Gaiety in March, 2009, would agree that a first-timer would watch that and never go again. If you want to nurture a deep and lasting appreciation of opera, and you’ve never seen opera before, I would still recommend starting somewhere else. I would say that in the same way I would tell somebody in Des Moines, who had never seen The Marriage of Figaro, not to see it first in Iowa. I’m sure numerous specific examples contradict this intuition. I invite reviews.

My attempt, in the comments section of the Wexford Opera post, to call out a name-dropping piece in the Irish Times for misspelling a name it was trying to use to add to its own importance was accused of name-dropping itself. I nearly defended myself. But it turns out I do not even care about that. I am guilty and not guilty of everything I am accused of.

I have, previously, disparaged people who look forward to drinking in Grogan’s, but I do not care about wannabes and posers. They are not exclusive to Grogan’s, anyway. I have criticized lazy, star-gazing journalism (the comparison between Garrison Keillor and Homer comes to mind), but I do not normally read papers and don’t care what is in them. I regularly attack literary journals in the US and Ireland, but I don’t care; they can do what they like.

This blog has made me seek, in myself, hatred for the things I normally mildly dislike or never bother with, therefore I must rummage through the places (like newspapers) I normally avoid, therefore I manufacture disdain.

This “From the Editor” column began in late March, 2009, as part of an expansion of the original, very very lo-fi Some Blind Alleys (I was using blogspot software back then). I wanted to write something that explained why I created this thing – the online journal – in the first place, and I also wanted to add to the site’s content and level of activity. And I thought it might be nice, from time to time, to rant a bit, or praise something that deserved it.

Now I have begun to despise the blog because of what it has turned me into – somebody who, with ten minutes free to write something, conjures up the very faintest displeasure and serves it to an audience as profound offense.

Additionally, it has obliterated within me the desire to write – or at least write more personal essays. I quite like writing personal essays, and while the world will certainly not suffer for the lack of them, neither would it suffer if the throwaway vilifications this blog seems to be obsessed with were to vanish.

An essayist must live, in his or her mind, in solitude, in total rejection of all his or her tastes, prejudices, expectations.

In this blog, I have increasingly created the equivalent of bad reality television. Every time I think the camera is on me, I pretend to be annoyed. The fact is, I am not annoyed by very much. Or rather, I am always annoyed by something, but who cares?

I have been trying to think of what could possibly replace the activity that this column provides. It can’t be reviews. They don’t come in often enough. Posting Plugs every day would be too much like a data entry job. I thought about running an Arts Journalism section, but the NUJ would probably break my wrists if I didn’t pay freelancers (I’m in the NUJ; I’m not poor-mouthing it). And worse: an Arts Journalism column would give the exact opposite impression that this blog does – that there are really countless and innumerable wonderfulnesses to expose in arts and culture, when we, even setting our faint indignation aside, know this is not the case.

If this were my job, I’d be able to use the blog to explore new areas myself – such as journalism, criticism, etc. I’d interview some interesting people, perhaps. Who knows?

But one thing is certain: activity in the “From the Editor” section has to go down. A very busy phase for Some Blind Alleys, the journal, will pass this week – it will be over at exactly 5:30 p.m., Thursday, October 29. After that, I look forward to spending a lot more time reading submissions, editing, commissioning, thinking about the spring 2010 masterclass, etc.