There are a few sacrifices that we make as a part of this site. The one that strikes me as particularly relevant today is our anonymity. We spend almost all of our time and our entries on this blog talking about music, movies, and other types of art. That’s no sacrifice - these are the things we love, and if you can’t tell, we tend to love them a bit more than your average joe.

The thing is, the essence of what makes art so vital is emotion. All the technique is the world is just wasted time if it doesn’t make the viewer feel something. By removing ourselves from the blog’s equation and instead offering up noms de plume, I think we tend to both distance our emotions from our writing and sacrifice a degree of emotional relatability.

On the whole, I don’t have a problem with this emotional chasm. When we talk about the things we love, relying on emotion to convey the greatness of a work of art is full of subjective landmines. I know E likes the music of Gavin DeGraw, and I have a soft spot for Vanilla Sky, even though both of these things are objectively speaking, pretty crummy. But, for whatever reason, they work for us on an emotional level. Once you’ve had your moment of emotional connection, quality tends to go right out the window.

Part of what we try to do here is distance ourself from the subjective and try to explain the universal qualities behind the things that we love. I think that Decemberists week stands as a high point for the blog in that respect. But, our somewhat cold analysis of the strong songwriting and interesting musical compositions that the band creates only tells part of the story, and in the breadth of human experience, a pretty small part. When you get right down to it, the craft behind the music The Decemberists make is secondary to the emotional connections that they can create.

So, with that said, I think E’s exceptional entry from earlier today truly deserves your attention. Rather than talk about why Red Right Ankle works, he takes it as a prompt to talk about love and how music can help to create love between people. It’s a beautiful entry, and probably one of the best single pieces of writing ever to appear on the blog. For me to write about another pirate story would only be a disservice to what he accomplished. So, please, scroll down and read. You’ll find something much bigger than music to think about.