Words & Music by Mike Power

Five years ago today I started this blog as a new artistic project after I quit my band of 30 years. In the days since I started Words & Music I wrote a novel, became a poet, and composed most of my favorite original songs.

I have posted about 650 poems, stories, songs, reviews, and drawings, and have clocked about 150,000 views. I am grateful for every eyeball and every eardrum that looked and listened to something I posted here.

Blogging is a social media like any other, feeding on views, likes, and comments. There is a place for that kind of thing in art – a focus on having people look at or listen to your work – but it’s not a place I want to be right now. So I’m going to take a break from the blog to devote more attention to projects that feed on time and solitude.

The only thing I’m going to miss might be you.

There is a thing called the “ideal reader” who is the individual a writer keeps in mind while he writes, to turn our monologue into dialogue. I have a picture in my head of mine. She is so sweet. And she might be you. I hope she is.