Now, even all these pages of answers to music and non-music questions only scratch the surface of who someone is, and a link to a Twitter or a bio blurb doesn’t tell you why these people are writing here (or editing, or podcasting).
Whatever they write, though, the point is that the reader can get to know them a little better, and maybe it could bring our community closer together. They can make jokes or take it seriously. They could go on as short or long as they desired. So, in order for us, the writers, to introduce ourselves further to you, the reader, I made up a little writer survey and told everyone to only answer the questions they wanted and they would be published completely. If I didn’t feel like I was a part of something in doing this, I just don’t know what the point would be. The Internet lets us do this without the confines of geography or space. And for those of us that maybe made it too big of a part, we latch onto the community of it, whether it’s a venue or a label or scene or a band that practices next-door. When you’re growing up, and even after that, music is a big part our identity. Our parent site of CoS surely does, as does Pitchfork, Stereogum, Vice, The 405, and down to the labors of love, like Zach Hart’s We Listen for You. Everywhere on the Internet that is worth a damn has just that. I am proud, though, that it feels like a community could be forming out of this, that the section could have an identity that hinges on the talented people that write here. Sometimes I’ve been able to help guide the projects, other times people have turned in 3,000 words that hardly needed a comma added (Ryan Bort). I’m not going to say I’m proud of my work here, all I’ve done is encourage people to write. I remember that it happened pretty quickly, under less-than-desirable circumstances, and now we are here at the end of the year. I don’t even remember what month I started “directing” Aux.Out.