State of the Blog

We've had lots of great linkage lately, so thanks to Modern Art Notes, James Tata, oboeinsight, the Renée Fleming fan group, the Fredösphere, and everyone else. For that person undoubtedly disappointed by Ionarts after finding us through a search for octogenarian erections pictures: what can I say? Search engines are a mystery. Sorry not to offer what you wanted. I'm not really sorry, just terminally polite (give me a break: I grew up in the Midwest).

What is Ionarts? The anonymous Paris weblogger at never been home, in an interesting post about the state of blogging, hits our nail on the head:

Ionarts offers serious reviews, which I enjoy reading, but fails to be a real 'bloggy' site because its hair is rarely let down. It behaves more like a self-published webzine, which is fine.

This is true that most of the personal side of blogging has never sat comfortably with us. I have never put my blogging philosophy into words, but I have to admit that the phrase "self-published webzine" is awfully close. I suppose that if our proverbial hair were long and blond like Mélisande's, we might feel more at ease in letting it down. However, judging from what happens to the poor girl because of her hair (à droite, puis à gauche!), she might have done herself a favor by keeping her hair short or pinned up and sticking to the subject matter at hand.

My feeling about what we do here at Ionarts is that we typically approach everything from a rather personal and idiosyncratic point of view (being thrilled by Renée Fleming choosing Baroque repertoire, for example), much moreso than the typical traditional reviewer, but without descending too much or often into the hopelessly quotidian ("I ate a Twix at intermission"). I am not certain that our "nonblogginess" does not adversely affect our popularity as far as readership. Much to our chagrin, we have managed to avoid mention in most of the big newspaper articles on blogging and the arts. If readers have any reaction to this question ("Is Ionarts too serious?"), that's what the comments function is for, please. Having just acquired an excellent digital camera, I am ready to oblige with some whimsical and endearing personal accents. I will hopefully be able to post some nice photographs from my upcoming trip to Rome.