{"id":8931,"date":"2025-05-26T09:24:08","date_gmt":"2025-05-26T13:24:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/?p=8931"},"modified":"2025-06-01T05:46:19","modified_gmt":"2025-06-01T09:46:19","slug":"new-yorker-on-guitars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/?p=8931","title":{"rendered":"New Yorker on Guitars"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Here is the article by Nick Paumgarten. <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

These sentences got me thinking: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

“…invites solipsistic dissolution masquerading as self-actualization. Or perhaps it’s the other way around.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Am I lost in myself, dreaming, playing music for my own good, my own ego, my own failures and lost dreams? Or am I slowly, surely, in my own way, making some little art each night that makes me a little bit better as a person? Maybe that art will leave the third floor, maybe it won’t. Does it matter? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other response, of course, is that at least I’m not smoking crack. As a public-school teacher who is getting rich very slowly, if I want to devote some small portion of my income after I’ve paid for both kids to go to college and ensured that our house isn’t falling down, why not music? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can feel the tension, too, within this article. Yeah, go see a bunch of guitars. Anyone who can play even a little bit knows the deal: you walk into a music store and play six or seven guitars and there will be one that is magic to you. I wish this exhibit had players hanging out there — much like the videos they publish at Norman’s Rare Guitars — where someone would be sitting on a couch waiting for you to come in so that they could show you what the guitar sounds like.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here is the article by Nick Paumgarten. These sentences got me thinking: “…invites solipsistic dissolution masquerading as self-actualization. Or perhaps it’s the other way around.” Am I lost in myself, dreaming, playing music for my own good, my own ego, my own failures and lost dreams? Or am I slowly, surely, in my own way, … Continue reading New Yorker on Guitars<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles-of-note"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8rNFZ-2k3","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8931"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8945,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8931\/revisions\/8945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}