Introductions

When a writer is failing,
When his verse, it does shame,
When his prose, it is stilted,
And his thoughts, they are lame;
Why, 'tis then that our writer,
Bursts forth through the fog;
He opens his laptop
And commences his blog.

The first thing I should extend is my apology for assuming that my opinion demands expression. Likely as not, there is no such exigency and, if there is, it is merely the demand of my own ego. In a more silent age, a writer would not write unless he truly believed he had something to say and others the need to hear it. If the writers of our age entertain any such notions, they do a marvelous job of suggesting the contrary. Writing and expression have ceased to become means to some end but ends in and of themselves, which has made tolerable the stream-of-consciousness that is the only innovation of modern literature. But the spewing forth of our consciousness, undiluted, is not so much an innovation as an infraction; it is not that we moderns invented the form, but rather we we are the only ones who think highly enough of ourselves to use it. The man who writes a stream-of-consciousness must find his consciousness very interesting indeed.

So I extend my apology; I extend my apology because, despite what I wrote above, this blog will be, of necessity, a stream-of-consciousness. There is no form here; there is no method; I am not unveiling a meticulous, thought-out work. I intend to write whatever comes to mind, for no other reason than that it came to mind. That this is indulgent, I have no doubt. I would only ask my readers be indulgent.

I intend this to be a blog on culture, but I do not think it shall be a cultured blog. I have had quite enough of those and wash my hands of the lot. I make no demands of form in the comments; by all means, feel free to be as raucous, offensive, rude, crass, and brutish as you wish. I only ask that you be honest. It is the great joy of such an endeavor that a reader can provide feedback instantly; modern technology may yet be good for something.

As far as introductions go, I should say a few words about myself, in case my audience extends beyond New Critics. Your servant is the kind of man who can think of no higher calling than sitting in a tavern with a bottle of rum and tunelessly singing laments for forgotten heroes and lost causes. Perhaps, if he had been born in another age, he would have been an iconoclast; perhaps, if your servant would have been born in an age of Faith and Tradition, he would have been a skeptic and a radical. But your servant was born in an age of rootlessness and license, of doubt and progress, an age that has sacrificed depth for breadth, order for freedom, place for profit, contemplation for diversion, love for license. And so your servant is not an iconoclast, but an iconophile; there is nothing dearer to his heart than tradition and ritual and order and community and nothing further from it than the all-embracing, base, and utilitarian machinery of Progress. But he is under no illusions; he does not defend the old ways because they were perfect, nor does he defend them in the hopes of bringing them back. Rather, he defends them precisely because they were not perfect and had no pretensions of being so; he defends them precisely because they cannot be brought back. I have a weakness for lost causes, like Mr. Butler, once they are really lost.

Lastly, for cat-killing curiosity's sake, I should explain my title. Rum, because, it is the true drink; Rome, because it is the true faith; Reason, because it helps us discern both.

Yours &c,

V. Maro Grammaticus