and Words
Na-na-na-na, na-na-na-na
Hey hey hey, goodbye
He’ll never love you the way that I love you
‘Cause if he did, no no, he wouldn’t make you cry
He might be thrillin’ baby, but a-my love (my love, my love)
So dog-gone willin’, so kiss him (I wanna see you kiss him)
Go on and kiss him (I wanna see you kiss him) goodbye, na-na
Lyric excerpts from Musixmatch.
A little over a year ago, my friend read though a number of my posts on Facebook; he noted the length of each post and the subject matter, which centered around social issues. He suggested that I start a blog. This was a great idea. While you can certainly mark each post as publicly visible, there are limitations to posts on Facebook. There are many limitations for formatting your posts; you can’t emphasize words (with different sized fonts, italics or boldface), you have limited ways to embed images, among other restrictions. Finally, one of the biggest motivating factors was that the content would be strictly mine. If I should happen to close my Facebook account, it doesn’t simply go into the ether.
That suggestion started the ball rolling, though with an unexpected detour. While I longed to write about ideas on social justice, I’d need to establish an appropriate name for that blog, and that would take a bit more thought. However, as it happens, many years ago, I had the idea of building a blog about music and the memories they trigger; that’s this blog. I had registered the domain many years before, and it simply quietly mocked me while I renewed its registration every year, with no blog in sight. It had been about ten years before I finally did something with the domain.
Putting the site together meant learning new skills and ideas. I learned about WordPress, plug-ins, embedding widgets. Having developed a simple webpage before, HTML was already familiar, so that wasn’t going to be an issue. I had a Spotify premium account and found a nifty feature that allows you to embed a mini player with album art. Lyrics could easily be found online; I put some on each post and referenced that page. I had a rough idea how I wanted each entry to look, but it took me a bit of time to fine tune it. While nothing is ever perfect, it was finally up to my satisfaction. I made my first official blog post in February of 2021.
With the skills that I had acquired on this blog, I eventually launched that second blog. Those who know me personally know about them both. I launched that second blog in April Fool’s Day; that was intentional. Page previews for Facebook and Twitter and comment plug-ins came later, but they were fairly easy to add once you got the hang of WordPress. It’s now rolling, and I simply add posts.
In high school, I had aspirations to be a writer, specifically a novelist; this went basically nowhere. I studied engineering and started my career as such, and that took much of my time. I kept an online journal, which is now long gone into Geocities ether. Going back to writing has been therapeutic. This blog allowed me to reflect upon music, memories, and how it’s all interleaved with my being. The other blog allows me to deconstruct the issues and decipher why I find some of these so unsettling. They each feed my soul in different ways.
You’ll notice that I don’t mention my other blog here, if you’re interested reach out to me personally and I’ll send you a link. I want to keep them separate. This blog is a fanciful reflection on a jumbled collection of memories. The other is a blunt and often controversial ponderings on social issues. I normally alternate writing posts for each blog. My aspiration is to keep this blog generally free of controversy and conflict.
Or rather that was my aspiration; life is never that simple. As I continue to write each post on this blog, the very top of the page has an embedded player that points to Spotify. Spotify has been the topic of much controversy of late with the exit of Neil Young (and others), its continuing support for Joe Rogan, and its willful looking the other way on dangerous COVID-19 misinformation. I believe in freedom of speech and will defend it, but there are ethical boundaries to what you can say. The prototypical example is that you can’t scream “Fire!” in a crowded movie theater; it endangers the lives of others. Misinformation kills, and I think we need to be collectively more responsible. Words matter.
For instance, just because Nazis are here in the US, they have a right to free speech (provided they otherwise obey the law). They have the right to talk. However, they don’t have the right to have a megaphone. It means that I need not directly or indirectly give them any funds nor support a platform by which they can spread their hate. I explicitly choose to not support the platform.
If your best friend is the class bully, and you stand idly by as you watch them terrorize victims every day. Do you rationalize that you did nothing wrong? Though I will not advise you on how you should manage your services, this is an idea that wore on me. While the readers of this blog are modest in number, I indirectly promote a platform that does not align with my moral compass, one that turns a blind eye to misinformation for profit. After some consternation, I made the decision to change it.
However, deciding which service to use was navigating a figurative mine field. I worked at Microsoft for over 29 years, the idea of promoting Apple Music was nearly as objectionable (hey, it’s my baggage; I admit it). There was also YouTube Music, but I generally have distain for making money by way of farming your users’ information, which is Google’s business model. Both of those were out. Having eliminated Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube Music, what is left? After some searching and some testing, I found that Amazon Music was able to create an embedded player that included an option to play a clip as well as the album art. With minimal tweaking, I was able to get everything looking much like it did before.
I will admit that there are some elements that are easier or better with Spotify, but I won’t be conflicted with my moral compass upon writing, publishing, and reading each post. Henceforth all new posts will use the Amazon Music player instead of Spotify. Additionally, I’ll update my older posts to use the Amazon Music player over time; Spotify will be expunged. Honestly, unless you’re reading this particular post, the blog won’t read much differently than it did before, nor will you otherwise read about my distain for the service.
There’s this little song that they play in many sporting events as players are removed from the game; I’m sure it’s familiar to many of you. It is with this song that I bid farewell to using Spotify on my blog. I’m waving my figurative hand in goodbye at you. I won’t say if there’s a particular finger more pronounced than others on that hand as I’m waving, but I will say “Good riddance.”
Goodbye, Spotify.