Caveats abound, but mostly I mean that I'll never be able to really go into detail about some music I love, and feel that I've also done justice to some of the conventions of musical reviewing. The more I love a piece of music, the more intricate my relationship with it becomes - and the more difficult it becomes to write clearly about it.

The writing comes the clearest in little epiphanies - interestingly, much like in appreciating music, or solving math probems, for me (what a geek, eh?).

So to mirror that process, I'm finding that this writing, in brief little bursts in which I hope to elucidate something, anything, about music, is doing two things. My writing about music is becoming more like my listening to music, and less like conventional writing about music.

I'm keeping in mind here comprehensive discussions of works in other art forms that I've read (oddly, there seem to be fewer for music, that are sensible). Often after reading them I feel that in large part, they're worthless. The important results of reading such things can occur on the philosophical/argumentative level, but the connection between that level and the level on which I usually listen to music is tenuous at best, even if I do love to philosophize. The most important results are, rather, the little epiphanies - single points of sudden understanding.

To me, these seem to be characteristic of "impressions," just as some of my special moments in listening to music are.

So why not turn this experience back on itself, and write in "epiphany form"?