A real (sort of) goodbye.

Somebody brought up a good point in the comments, an oversight I had made when closing things down around here: namely, now that ECEU is gone, where should you go (if you weren't already) to find/hear/read about the kinds of music I featured here over the past four years. And, never being one to turn down a chance to share great and wonderful things with people, I knew I had to make one last post to point all of you in some new directions. The following sites - and I tried to narrow them down as best as possible - are the ones I read most frequently for music recommendations, commentary, etc.

Said the Gramophone
Largehearted Boy
Some Songs Matter
This Recording
All Songs Considered (NPR)
Chromewaves
Captain Obvious
I Am Fuel, You Are Friends
Cover Lay Down
Star Maker Machine
You Ain't No Picasso

You are the music, while the music lasts. - T.S. Eliot

And finally, a final final note about how all of this is not at all quite final. It's been much harder than I would have imagined to walk away from this site, though I'm determined to do it for the most part, and so I've had to compromise with myself a bit, in order to help myself be able to walk away. The compromise that I've come up with, then, is this: I will keep the site up (though all past posts are deleted and gone forever already) and I will continue to write my year-end "best of" records post, once each and every year. That way - and I realize I'm probably flattering myself here to even think you would this care this much - I can continue to let you know, at least on an annual basis, the music I'm digging. That and, geek that I am, I would be making the lists anyway; I did that before there ever was an ECEU, and I'll continue to do it until my ears give out, most likely.

So this goodbye isn't entirely a goodbye, though it is the end of something, for sure. Thank you for all your lovely comments on my last post, they will continue to remind me that what I did here meant at least some small thing to some people, and if I ever get back into the music blogging game for real, I'll be sure to let all of you know. Until then, I'll write some guest pieces here and there for other music sites (which I'll try and remember to link to), and I'll show up at the end of each year to let you know about my very favorite records.

See you then, friends.

Shutting off the lights...

Thanks to all of you who made running this site for the past three and a half years worth all the effort, energy, and time I put into it. Hopefully, I've introduced you to some quality music in that time, and you, in turn, have shared good music with others. It only works if it's a circle, after all.

Don't worry about me, I'll keep listening and talking and thinking about my favorite music, just not to an audience of strangers, at least not for a long while. I might show up again down the road, though not at this address (blogger.com always left much to be desired), but for now it's time for me to move on and find different things to do with my time. It'll be strange not to have ECEU in my life any more, but I'm convinced that, in the end, it's for the best.

I'll be shutting the doors on this place for good in just a bit, but please know that your comments and emails and community were always deeply appreciated by me, and allowed me to keep doing this even when I felt like I didn't have the energy left for it any more. It was an honor to share my love of music, films, and words with you, and I hope it meant something to at least a few of you as well.

(If you leave me your email address on this post, or email me directly, I'll be sure to add you to my list of people to notify if/when I start up another site in the future.)


Division Day - Elliott Smith

See You Later - Elliott Smith


So it goes.

perspective.

"We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors, so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."

- Carl Sagan


"The Only Moment We Were Alone" - Explosions in the Sky