I began writing for Ulster Publishing nearly nine years ago. I was ambivalent. I had swatted off a few offers for a music writing position at Almanac Weekly over the years for a cocktail of reasons.
1) Once you start caring about a piece of writing, you’d be amazed how quickly your rate drops below the current minimum and keeps plummeting toward the figure Mohonk offered me in 1979, my first job. I didn’t need more heart points or fame points or connection points at the time; I needed more dollar points. Using one devalued art to write about an even more devalued art seemed unlikely to do much for my bass line.
2) I was actively pursuing music from the musician side (still am). It wasn’t conflict of interest that worried me so much (though maybe it should have been — cover a small scene for long enough and it is inevitable that people begin to perceive a player/critic as self-serving, a one-man-brand synergy). What worried me was more that I would get pulled off course by the writing. In others words, I was afraid I would like it, that essays would start humming in my head on my walks instead of songs. And that did in fact happen.
3) Look, the opinions flow with me. I am a playful, involuntary theorizer. I am easy to form judgments, easy to reverse them. Language to me is always experimental. I am an externalizer. I think, process, and talk in ill-considered and extemporaneous ways. I jam. But I was not interested in being bound to this erratic, non-committal flux. I foresaw the dangers long before canceling was a thing. The thought that has thunk moves on. The permanence of publishing was no concern.
I didn’t really know whether I would be sensitive to the kind of contempt that the role invites. Turns out that my feelings about criticism are almost identical to my feelings about praise. I like knowing it is out there, but I don’t prefer to be there when it happens. So I don’t read comments and all is well.
Why do I bring this up? Because it all worked out rather nicely for me, and because HV1 returns to print this week, an essential part of life in the mid-Hudson. I am rather beaming with quiet pride for the publisher Geddy Sveikauskas and the whole crew, most of whom I have never met in person (writers were made for lockdown). Can I entreat you, reader, to read, to engage, and to support? The press is all of us.
Thank you for reading Hudson Valley One. We rely on your support to continue providing local, substantive news. Please check out our 
