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Here are some lyrics from the top song on Billboard's top country songs:

Early Monday morning, til Friday 5
Man I work, work, work but I don't climb, climb, climb
Boss man can shove that overtime up his can
All I want to do is put a drink in my hand

Fill it up, throw it down
I got a 40 hour week worth of trouble to drown
No need to complicate it, I'm a simple man
All you got to do is put a drink in my hand

Here's #2, from the Tailgates and Tanlines album:

You got your hands up
You're rocking in my truck
You got the radio on
You're singing every song
I'm set on cruise control
I'm slowly losing hold
Of everything I got

Numbers three through six are love songs that read like every love song. Number five was somewhat interesting, alluding to a breakup and the singer's guilt for cheatin'. Next non-love song:

For me it's a beach bar
Or on a boat underneath the stars
Or with my band up on a stage
For a while everything's okay

For some it's a fast car
Moonshine in a mason jar
And everybody has their way
Somehow to escape

Consider the characters in the non-love songs I've shown you so far. The characters are deliberately common Johnny Paycheck types. In fact, the narrator in the third example doesn't even have an explicit character, and we are instead left to infer who the person is by a list of things the person enjoys.

There's a thread of pop music that is deliberately opaque, so the listener can imagine a mood instead of focusing on the story, like this song about having a crush with an accompanying video about nothing. There is some great writing around interesting characters: The Nields' wallflower or Dinah Washington unloved or this self-loathing narrator and his captor or even this immigrant longing for home which also touches on the I remember fond times motif.

The country songs don't have their provenance in any of that. Rather, they trace back to the creed, a document that the faithful are expected to recite to reinforce the teachings of the religion. From the Apostle's creed:

I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and life everlasting.

As literature, it is rudimentary and has no characters to speak of. It is simply a list of things the author of the creed believes in. It was written for others to recite, and when they do, they are affirming that they too believe in these things. The intent of a Christian creed is as clear: to make sure that everybody has their story straight and doesn't stray from the accepted norm.

A country song, like any good rock & roll, is meant to be sung along to, and I'd say, subjectively, that country songs tend to be easier than most to sing along with, thanks to an emphasis on clear singing and little divergence from verse-chorus forms.

If you go back to the top of this column and read those lyrics as creeds, they make a lot of sense as such. They are a list of things that the speaker believes and enjoys, and not all that much more.

Chart-topping hip hop tends to do it too. The singer in this song also has no character or goals beyond her fashion statement:

[...]I'm gonna hit this city
Before I leave, brush my teeth with a bottle of Jack
Cause when I leave for the night, I ain’t coming back

I'm talking - pedicure on our toes, toes
Trying on all our clothes, clothes
Boys blowing up our phones, phones
Drop-toping, playing our favorite cds
Pulling up to the parties
Trying to get a little bit tipsy
[...]

Aint got a care in world, but got plenty of beer
Aint got no money in my pocket, but I’m already here

But at least this sort of thing is intermixed with hip hop songs that touch on some conflict and characters that do more interesting things.

A reader who formerly lived in Austin would also like me to clarify that radio country is not all of country, and was quick to point to current songs in the country genre with good lyrics. I.e., there are still musically intelligent adults who listen to country and still musically intelligent singers who write for them. But that has little to do with what is in heavy rotation on the radio and on Billboard's top sellers list.

How did country music go from being like any other pop but with more twang to being a long sequence of creeds about how the speaker enjoys family, the outdoors, and a good rock 'n' roll show? I dunno. But that's what we've got: millions of people who choose to listen to and recite creeds about a relatively narrow definition of small-town life, each time affirming faith in that creed and implicitly rejecting alternatives. At least disagreeing with a country song isn't heresy.

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Continued from last time-it's my top 11 of 2011.

5. Liz Phair: Exile on Guyville

4. Victoire: Cathedral City

It is an album for driving at night. If you find yourself in transit after sunset, then this album will help you. A link

3. Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru : Ehtiopiques 21

It seems that the right way to purchase her music is via a $20-ish contribution to her music education foundation.

2. UNKLE: End titles...Stories for film

I had Psyence fiction on repeat maybe a decade ago, and here they are again. The band isn't really a band; more like a few producers who put together a set of tracks with a consistent spy movie tone and fuzz to the bass. The vocals are from a variety of different characters; the stuff from Gavin Clark sounded great. E.g., Heaven (“Where's the seraphim? Where's the money that I made?”), which is the audio for this video that is not at all what I picture when I hear this song (maybe start around 2:45).

And then there was Katrina Ford. Whose track is actually on When did the night fall but I feel compelled to mention her, and I can't really differentiate between the two albums. Ms Ford attacks her songs. There is whooping and wailing throughout. There is passion. A lot of people don't like her, because they like their singers to follow more rules. Celebration's Hello Paradise didn't make this list only because I think my tracks were mis-tagged.

1. Wye Oak: The Knot.

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As all these lists are, this is a subjective and personal list. But enough about caveats: here are the eleven albums I listened to most in 2011, as enumerated by last.fm, which records everything I listen to except when listening on my telephone, which makes the numbers a serious undercount, but so it goes.

I've split this into two parts so you have more time to check this stuff out if so inclined. Also, perennials like Yo-yo Ma rehashes Bach's Cello Concertos and The Sundays' Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic (or, The perfection of saudade) kinda go without saying. I also excluded everything from the Mobtown microshows, due to a playlist anomaly; don't let that keep you from downloading the ones from Celebration, Big in Japan, Dustin Wong, Yeveto, We used to be family, and Austin Stahl. I also didn't include Chris Bathgate's Salt Year because I really just put two tracks on repeat.

11. The Rural Alberta Advantage: Departing

10. KLF: The chill out album

9. Lower Dens: Twin-hand movement

8. Bon Iver: For Emma

7. Beangrowers: Not in a million lovers

6. Velvet Underground: Live, 1969

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I have always wanted to camp out in one of the parks in my city, so thank you for allowing me the opportunity to do so last weekend.

Although it's an oft-used factoid that the National Park Service controls 70% of land in DC, as far as I can tell, you don't allow camping until Maryland or Virginia.

So I was delighted to read about how you were letting tents stand in Macpherson Square, in downtown DC. I could leave the house around eight, take a bike share bike down to a great Chinese restaurant, then afterwards walk down to the square and pitch a tent. I could not imagine a more halcyon evening.

I'd been hoping for a chance to go for a week beforehand, and the night was just that pleasant. I can't really give you a rational breakdown of what makes camping fun (not that you need one), but the process of putting up a house for a night is a much more meaningful way to interact with a park than passing through for a walk or sitting on a bench for an hour. There's more preparation and thought to be had beforehand, and more to remember afterward. Being able to do this here in town made it even more special, and not just because it saved me the tedium of arranging the car trip: I was able to experience a familiar park, which I've walked and biked through countless times, in an entirely new way.

Figure One: I'm the one in orange and red.

When I arrived, it was dark and the square was mostly sleeping. I put up the tent and got in pretty quickly. At this point, all of my sensory input was audio, being that my view was nothing but the orange walls of the tent. But even just sitting in the tent and reading, I was very aware of where I was, in a manner that's hard to describe from outside of a tent.

Pretty much by definition, camping is sleeping in a non-residential area, so noise is a key problem in any camp site. At car camping sites, the tents are right next to RVs with generators and TVs, and there are no walls separating sleeping campers from the cars with lousy mufflers that might arrive late at night. Sleeping in the backcountry of Shenandoah Park, where you advise us to string food up on tree branches to prevent bears from eating it, the rustling of deer--Oh, please let it be a deer--is enough to wake a light sleeper.

Macpherson Square, of course, has buses every half hour, emergency vehicles, and belligerent drunks. In my neighborhood, not too far from the bars, this argument is pretty familiar:
Loud person A: Get in the car!
Loud person B: No way!
Loud person A: You're too drunk. Get in the car!
Loud person B: No way!
It often runs for half an hour or so. There was one of those going on the night I slept at Macpherson Square.

At 2AM, one guy came by and started yelling It's 2AM! This is your alarm call. [nasally:] eee eee eee!. Motorcycles at the stoplights by the square seemed to make a point of revving their engines. Some passers-by were yelling get a job. It's unfortunate that so many consider yelling at sleeping people to be a valid form of public discourse, but I suppose it's hard to teach park etiquette to those who are just passing by the park.

I mention the noise not as a serious complaint--I knew what I was getting into when I decided to camp downtown--but as something to consider as you expand your program of allowing camping in walking distance to city Metro stations. I know that at many RV-oriented sites there is a camp host who is authorized to give a warning (or more) to those who are a disturbance; having somebody who can quickly call officers of the United States Park Police when needed would solve these final little issues.

Thank you for allowing me to camp in my little patch of the dozens of mini-parks and 22 full national parks within DC city limits. There's no better way to appreciate that the Park Service serves more than suburbanites who like to drive really far for their recreation, and no better way for me to appreciate DC and its parks. I even finally looked up who James Birdseye Macpherson was!

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I stand in opposition to common sense.

Yes, it seems like something it is impossible to oppose. It's like kicking puppy dogs, or thinking pedophiles should have rights. There is just no way to argue with somebody who is presenting a commonsense argument.

Which is what makes the term vacuous, and a shorthand not for this makes easy sense but please don't analyze my thinking too much, or more simply, trust me.

Common sense is anti-intellectual. It is a way of saying, there are people who thought about this harder than I have, but they shouldn't have. It is a way of saying that the layperson with a beer in his or her hand should be able to think through even the toughest problems.

Here's a reporter that counted Ms Palin using “some combination of `solutions,' `conservative' and `commonsense' twenty-five times” over the course of a dozen questions. Not to be outdone, Ms Bachmann is the bearer of “the voice of common sense.”

It comes up in balancing the budget. From the Common Sense Balanced Budget Amendment Campaign: “ We The People believe it is time to force the government to handle its budget like our families have to, by balancing it.” After all, it is common sense that debt is a bad thing, and therefore should be avoided. We all know somebody who didn't take that advice, and who is now working to pay off a bad mortgage or servicing a student debt whose monthly payment is only a little more than they make every month.

We've got two problems with our commonsense conclusion. The first is that a government is not a person. I'm going to keep this paragraph short because I know that you know many ways in which sovereign debt differs from your credit card--AAA bonds, levying taxes, obligations to citizens, building hydroelectric dams et cetera. Link thanks to techne.

The second problem with this commonsense notion that debt is bad and must be avoided at all costs is that debt isn't necessarily bad. On a personal level, it's hard to get an education or a house without some sort of debt, so arguing against debt means arguing for a limited education and a lifetime of renting for most folks. For some, that's the right path; others (myself included, I suppose) are delighted to have a house and a more-than-high-school education.

Even business debt isn't like personal debt. A business that isn't in debt isn't using its assets to its fullest potential.

There's a question of the level of debt, which is much more difficult. What is a reasonable level depends on too many factors for us to easily chat out a solution. Is there a commonsense, folksy way to digest a thousand-page budget report?

None of what I'm writing here really applies to those many citizens and politicians who are saying that the U.S. deficit is out of control and we need to make drastic changes in the big-ticket items like war, social security, and medical billing. Even if the calculus is more subtle than for credit cards, sovereign debt can be irresponsibly used. But politicians often fall into a folksy checkbook-balancing rhetoric to bolster their reduce-the-deficit position, and get their political power from the all-debt-is-bad segment. Also, I have no respect for anybody who pushes for cuts in minor programs using a budget-balancing rhetoric. To use the personal finance metaphor, cutting a few government bureau offices for the sake of paying down the debt is like cutting out sweets for the sake of paying off a mortgage.

I wonder how the prevalence of personal debt problems turn into political talking points. Do we see more politicians talking about the commonsense need for the federal government to balance its budget when we have more voters who can't do so? It seems that rhetoric like “we're really held captive by a system which is a debt-based economic system” has more pull when the listener is expected to have his or her own out-of-control debt.

If the big trend in the population over the last few years has been a massive personal debt crisis, it seems almost natural that politicians are now selling themselves on their ability to handle federal debt, so that the federal agenda reflects only seemingly related individual problems.

Let me go back to how a businesses that is growing as quickly as possible is almost by definition in debt. The people who are running a growing business understand that debt isn't the root of all evil, but is a chance to make income today off of a reasonable future obligation. The people in the Common Sense Balanced Budget Amendment Campaign are the people who think the opposite of what the owner of a fast-growing business thinks, who fear the idea of balancing present gains against a future obligation. That group and the politicians who push debt as a pact with the devil have a message tailored for the people who aren't running a growing business, and in fact couldn't even make the right decisions in their personal financial lives.

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As I mentioned last time, I'm trying to turn some of the content I've written over the last several years into a book.

In the last year, I've had 37,500 unique visitors, which is a single slow day for a celebrity blogger, but not bad at all given that this is my seventh post in that period, on a side-scrolling blog that I do absolutely nothing to promote, where some of the content (the RSS-only stuff) is almost impossible to link to. But thanks, Ycombinator, for linking to a post I wrote in 2005.

Which is to say that writing books is good for my own irregular temprament, which can put out a solid amount of good stuff given enough time, but which may produce absolutely nothing for a month or, evidently, the better part of a year.

This would actually be my third book, so I'm not exactly a newbie here. Sorry if my history is hard to find; Eric Blair is certainly a hard-to-Google name. I've been trying to ameliorate this by killing off the other Eric Blairs one by one, but you can imagine that it's slow going. To the best of my abilities to calculate this, both presses I've worked with are now making a profit on what I wrote for them, although nonzero is a more fitting descriptor than blockbuster.

I think of writing as the last solitary art form. Film and music are collaborative efforts, and even visual arts like painting or photography require equipment makers who will have a real hand in what the outcome looks like. An author is a storyteller, whose words are entirely untied to any materials, or the added input of kibbitzers and contributors along the way. An author is Hemingway or Kerouak or even Stephen King, alone with a pen or a typewriter. He or she does not need outside help moving the machinery around a good paint supplier, somebody to stretch the canvas or to keep the plaster of Paris for the molds smooth. The word is ephemeral, and in the present day doesn't even need a typesetter, and for an e-book doesn't even need a press.

That too works for my temprament, as a hopelessly antisocial intellectual type who now and then passes on party invitations so he can stay home and do more research.

All of which is a lead-in to discussion of just how very social book publishing is. I got both of the above-mentioned book deals via personal connections, and if you don't have a contact or advocate, it will be a very uphill hike.

It's a simple information aggregation problem: you're an acquiring editor, and you have a slush pile of maybe a hundred query letters or manuscripts. Have a look at the sense of overwhelmed that the McSweeney's submissions page expresses:

Before you send anything, please make sure you've looked at (and maybe even read) some of our other books. Our interests are fairly wide-ranging, but some manuscripts clearly don't fit, so it's best to have some idea of what we might like. Second... oh, we don't know. Send whatever you want. We'll probably take forever to respond, and personal replies are often impossible. And we can only publish a few each year, and our decisions are idiosyncratic and sometimes inexplicable. We feel bad about all this, and we're continually tinkering with our system, but to some extent it's just inevitable.

Yes, I have tossed my manuscript on their slush pile, primarily because they seem to have an appreciation for the absurd.

For a large press, reading all the submissions would literally require several full-time staff, just to determine whether a submission maybe merits further consideration.

The solution: agents. The literary agent hires a full-time staff of people whose sole job is to determine whether a submission merits further consideration. Once the agent has selected a work as worth pursuing, then the acquiring editor at least has the signal that the work has percolated to the top of somebody's slush pile. Agents are paid by the writer, not the press, so the press just got the labor-intensive work of getting through the slush pile for free. Agents consistently claim that they bill the author 15%, but negotiate more than 15% more cash out of the press. I'm not sure how one would evaluate whether this counterfactual is true.

So the problem of evaluating submission quality jumped the rail from being about quality of submission to being a social issue about what agent the writer knows, who the agent knows in publishing, and how the agent communicates with the acquiring editor. After all, it's easier to gather information socially than personally. If I told you that you have until the end of the day to find the single most interesting or most likely to sell writing on the Internet today, you wouldn't just start reading, but would ask others, either online or off. All of which is not surprising for a medium with net in the name. But don't expect a purer process out of the purer medium of book publication.

Why I write, revisited

I wrote about the two things people look for in nonfiction in an early discussion. I still think like this, and it's one of the few early entries that I read now and am not embarrassed by (so do me a favor and don't click around too much with the Next and Previous links if you go to that post).

The first thing people look for in nonfiction is affect. There's a pleasant sense that you get from hanging out at the coffee shop with somebody who interests you, and you should get that from spending time with a book as well. Otherwise, you're stuck with a textbook, where reading is unpleasant work that you do only because expect it will have a utilitarian payoff.

Many agent listings I've seen fall just shy of asking the author for a marketing plan. Look over the pop econ and pop science books--those by Malcom Gladwell spring to mind--and you find books that are as much a cult of personality as real research.

The second thing people look for is information, but here's how I'd phrase the goal of all nonfiction now:

Place subessay on nonfiction here.

For both of these things, we're back to the personal. Here's you, there reader, and me, the author, and we're having a conversation. Talking to paper is rather one-sided, but I think you'll agree that the best books lead the voice in your head to talk back to the author. Some people hate the solitary nature of reading, and will only do significant reading for a class or a book group. But for everybody else, the marketing process has brought the book all the way from having one author in the room to having one author and one reader.

But in between, there's the committee of editors, associate editors, copywriters, agents--the network. Books are not unlike any other commodity, where there is an individual user and a small-scale producer, and then a whole lot of people who help one side find the other, an that passel of people have their techniques for making the link. John Hodgman, a former literary agent, advises that “novels which feature as characters well-heeled college graduates with no marketable skills who perhaps wanted to be writers once but now are publishing professionals living in New York will always be published. Always. Also: be sure to include a rousing gardening scene”. Y'know, he's not really kidding. A NYT survey of book reviewers asked each to name their favorite novel, and the list of picks was dominated by books by Updike, Roth, and DeLillo about growing up in the suburbs of New York thirty or forty years ago.

Before we get all Red State/Blue State about this, my subjective impression is that Christian inspiriational is as well-established a market as the people-with-literature-BAs market. Your guess is as good as mine as to whether those editors and agents are themselves readers of inspirational lit, but publishers have a solid theory of mind for a certain type of reader and pick books around that theory of mind.

Academic books are peer reviewed, by which we mean that the editor will survey academics about the value of the book before publishing. This is necessary because the editor is simply living in a different world, and really, truly thinks differently from the academics who are going to use the book as an input to production of studies and academic papers. For those books you see at Home Depot about how to put up drywall, there's market research you can do to calculate the expected number of people who need that item as an input to production. At which point the book is just another product.

But for less directly goal-oriented books, for fiction or not exactly how-to nonfiction, the agent's and acquiring editors problems become a theory of mind problem: can the editor picture readers who are going to love this book? I frankly think I'm not too far from the thinking of a New York editor in my own proposals, by the way, so this is not a lament about my own writing. I can't tell you how many agents and editors I've seen who insist that all nonfiction must have a narrative, which makes sense because if you're a literary type then you come from a world of fiction and text. But it shows us just how much easier it is to get published when writing rousing gardening scenes. I (heart) Klutz Press for successfully marketing to kinetic learners, which literary editors are not.

The editor has to guess what the reader wants, and the agent has to use his or her social network to convince the editor that there exists a sufficiently large group of people who would benefit from the author's writing, all of which is one more means by which a one-to-one interaction between reader and author becomes a tangled social problem.

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