Sometimes, the only proper way to begin is from the end, and then work backwards from there. To establish an endpoint that, inevitably, leads back to an origin. To spin a phrase: everything that has an end has a beginning. And this end serves as a beginning to introduce the themes needed to be understood to understand the process that led there. As you know, all stories have beginnings, middles and ends, and two out of three is not a bad start.

Even more so when it comes to history. We have, by the nature of these things, only access to the state of things as they happened to end up, and have to backtrack from where we are. There are many stories of how things came to be, but history is not just another story. While it is tempting to reduce history to a grand story of how things came about, a proper historical understanding must take into account the various trends and forces at work over large periods of time in complex interdependent ways. A story is a way of relating a series of events; history is making sense of how the events that lead us here came to pass.

At the very end of Internal Colonization, Alexander Etkind relates very briefly a story of Leskov, wherein a young gentleman is locked into a library for protesting the treatment of peasants. Being trapped in this library, the young gentleman begins to read, and discovers all manner of subversive literature on the nature of justice and emancipation. During the course of his reading, he discovers that the official administering the punishment to the aforementioned peasants is in fact an impostor. This does not help the peasants, but it serves as a brief recap of the main theme of the book: the coexistence of a rich body of literature and a state apparatus that is in many ways orthogonal to this body. There are Russian stories, and there is Russian history, and those left to administer the Russian Empire more often than not find themselves as merely pretending to be Russian, even as they carry out their duties.

This is a subtle move for a subtle sentiment, and the choice of internal colonization as leitmotif is well made. It refers both to the colonization of the physical interior of the Russian Empire, and of the minds of the Russian subjects. An empire needs subjects in order to enact its imperial will, and it needs these subjects to be imperial subjects, with empire in and on their mind. Colonization is as much a physical as a social and mental process.

Russian history is very much the history of expansion, imperialism and colonization. It was not a bottom-up movement where the various populations of the vast territories came together in a more perfect union. Rather, the process of expansion gradually came to include territories and populations that were by definition not Russian. Some of these – most notably the Siberian tribes – were exploited and/or exterminated, while others were left more or less to their own devices, albeit under imperial administration. The imperative to expand came both from the imperial center and from the daily grind of established practices. As the exploitative and profitable business of fur trapping moved game eastward, Russia followed.

What came back from these provinces was not only wealth, manpower and other spoils of empire, but also a mentality. It is impossible to govern even small territories without a proper administrative mindset, and as these territories became ever larger, the proper changes imposed themselves. Not only in terms of gradual changes over time, but as an imperative on those who engaged in the daily everyday grind. Empire makes demands of its subjects, and even those who govern it find themselves subjected to and by these demands. The flow of goods from the periphery to the center did not leave the center unaltered, but forced it to become accustomed to the fact that colonization always returns to sender.

Etkind traces this dialectics of colonialism through the interplay between stories and history. Or, put another way, between literature and empire. Beginning with the ancient tales of Rurik and ending with the likes of Dostoyevsky, he spins a historical weave of Russian narratives. At the center of attention is the colonized subject, in the many meanings of the words. This subject becomes ever more always-already split between the demands of empire, the possibilities expressed in literature, and the actually existing social world phenomenologically available to them. This process, at its most subtle, ends up with the imperial(ized) subjects visiting the countryside to partake of the local culture and traditions – cultures and traditions that they themselves as alienated colonized subjects did not have access to. It is one thing to be a Russian imperial subject with access to the rich body of literature written by other imperial subjects; it is quite another to simply live in the Russian Empire.

This split is not alleviated by the fact that Russian literature is very adept at capturing and representing it. Rather, it is aggravated by the fact that even though it is so well documented, this doesn’t seem to do anything to ease the absurdity of everyday life. The subject does its duty, but it is not itself in doing so – it is a duty imposed for reasons hard to fathom. Over the course of fulfilling this duty, a second self emerges, one that finds itself thinking “if I wasn’t on the job, I’d do something else instead”. Yet it is the subject performing these duties that gets social recognition, and it is as such you are addressed. As Dostoyevsky framed it in The Double, it is as if another version of yourself is walking around doing things in your name. Worse, this version of you seems to be more liked and respected than you are, so you have to keep up the act in order to not lose face.

It has been said that history is not just something that happens to other people. While Etkind does write a history of imperial Russia, he also makes the point that colonization is not just something that happens to other people. You, too, are the result of the many processes of colonization, no matter whether you find yourself at the center or the periphery. And, yes, you too will have to begin from where you are and backtrack to a point of origin. Find the subject matter, as it were. –

We’ve all been there. In the immediate aftermath of finding a new song that is just sooo good. And in the realization of the futility of our attempts to explain to others just how good it is. Seldom does our attempts work, but the impulse to try remains. It is the most human of experiences.

Yet, the question remains. How does one go about describing this feel? Or, more generally, how does one go about writing about any feel? Or music as such?

The distance between forms of expression is inherent to the question. Music is rhythm, beats, oontzes, unexpected turns of lyrical phrasing, gut wrenching moments of catharsis and the steady buildup towards apotheosis. Writing is, as you might imagine, not that. Yet the impulse remains. You heard the song, achieved the cathartic release, felt all the feels – now write ‘em!

Indeed, the introduction of 33⅓’s How to Write About Music makes mention of this, invoking a famous comparison that writing about music is like dancing about architecture. Which, naturally, is bound to miss out on some of the architectural nuances. Yet, after this invocation, it also points out that it would be something of a treat to actually see a well-performed dance about architecture. The point not being to reproduce the thing written about, but to use the thing as a stepping stone for further explorations of the possible.

Looking at a title such as How to Write About Music, you might expect it to proceed in different directions. One of them being a style manual pointing out the correct ways to reference musical works, different terms describing the various parts of a song, and a general overview of terms associated with different instruments and their sounds. Another direction would be more rock&roll about it, emphasizing that it’s not about the words but about feels, and that you therefore should infuse your writing with as much soulfelt honest appreciation the strained rules of grammar can contain, and then some. The possibility space afforded by such a broad title warrants an exploration.

And an exploration of possible spaces is just what this book consists of. Rather than being a technical manual or a heartfelt “go-for-it”, it illustrates by examples. Reading it is not so much a how-to as a this too – this too is writing about music, and this too is a valid expression about it. When perusing the various examples of writings on music contained within, you are left to your own analytical devices in determining what and how to write. It’s show rather than tell.

This, paradoxically, makes the book a good read whether or not you’re actually interested in writing about music. If you are interested, then each themed chapter is another resource to draw generic and stylistic inspiration from – learning from the masters, as Quintilian would have put it. If you are not particularly interested, the various pieces of writing on music stand well enough on their own to be simply read. Not least because, most likely, you’d never stumble upon these pieces when habitually out and about.

Bourdieu said at one point that music is beyond words, and thus has nothing to say. This opens up for critics to say anything about it; since music is beyond discourse, any discourse on the topic would have to be grounded in itself. As you might imagine, this raises the question of how to write about writing about music. If the subject matter has nothing to say, how does one go about saying things to those who wish to say something about it?

Ponder this conundrum enough, and you end up in the slightly more brutal question of how writing itself is possible. It would seem not to be, as most things point back to other things, making it inevitable to make amends to the text and include these other things. These things in turn point to other things, and as this process furthers, the text becomes either too long or – as is more often the case – incoherent. There is no starting point. The constant referencing and necessity to invoke other things to say what’s to be said limits the ability to write anything. Yet there is clear, coherent writing, and this points to its possibility. Like a bumblebee, it flies.

How do you dance about architecture? How do you explore the possible spaces afforded by the music that surrounds you? How do you turn the oontz oontz oontz drum drum oontz into an ecstatic heartpounding in your reader?

The impulse remains. Make it fly.