Error

I am teaching myself by producing scholarship about something I don't know very well (yet). I always think I should first learn something and then write about it, but it doesn't work that way for me. As a result, I am likely to produce something that is has a large built-in margin for error, or that is less confident than it ought to be. I could write a pretty good book about music after I write this one, probably.

On the other hand, I often find that I know more than I knew I knew. I think all my jazz background is an excellent preparation, even though jazz will hardly appear.  I like these weird non-coincidences or anomalies, like I finally get to write a book about music, but it will not be about the genre I know the best. Things like that often happen to me because of the way my mind works, in a more lateral than a linear way.