Blogs from the Underground

Welcome to my new blog! For those of you who may not know me, my name’s Brian Monroe.  Yes, that’s right–the one and only Brian Monroe.  The name is a Hibernian mixture of sorts, with Brian coming from the Irish king Brian Boru, who, if I recall correctly, helped unite Ireland during the 11th century against the Viking invasion.  The name Monroe comes from Scotland.  I’m not really sure what it’s derivation is, but I do know that my name in full–Brian Howard Monroe — loosely translated, means ‘The strong watchman of the marsh.’  Not all that glorious, but I guess it could have been worse, like ‘The dirty pervert outside the window,’ or ‘The foul dwarf of the cow pasture’ (not to put down dirty perverts or foul dwarfs).  But anyways that’s my name and that’s what it means, if this counts for anything.

This blog is something I’ve been wanting to do for a while but never really got around to it.  I have a keen interest in many topics which I like talking about and writing, but I’ve limited most of my musings to other people’s blogs.  A lot of the time I write little comments that I know most people will disagree with.  I don’t do it out of spite though, I  just like to add something provocactive to get people thinking differently.  Sometimes though I do the exact opposite and say things that everyone will agree with.  Like on a blog about The Beatles I recall writing, “I think we can all agree that The Beatles were an excellent group.”  Every once in a while I think people should take a break from all the arguing and just agree on the basics.  But in this case, I did it to be weird and funny.

 As to the name of this blog “Blogs from the Underground,” it comes from the Dostoyevsky book “Notes from the Underground.”  It’s considered the first Existential work and has been very influential with many subsequent authors.  It doesn’t have much of a plot but mainly deals with the neurotic self-obsessed thoughts and ideas of the main character (name escapes me) and his turbulent and hostile reactions to the most ordinary of social circumanstances.  I enjoyed the book because it had an unordinary plot and the main character was disgruntled.  I wasn’t necessarily riveted by the book, but enjoyed it nonetheless.  I guess my main reason for choosing the title is that it sounded cool.  But I also think that the whole thing with writing on people’s blogs stuff that I knew people would disagree with has a sort of “Notes from the Underground” flavor to it.  It’s the whole non-conformist’s dissension towards society’s unexamined and sterile attitudes and ideas which I’m going for.  I don’t really know if “Notes from the Underground” fits this description, but close enough. 

So, without further ado I present “Blogs from the Underground”–my musings of the world of art, music, politics and anything that’s on my mind fitting into the aforementioned criterea.  I’m glad I finally stopped procastinating and actually did it, and I just want to thank Tom Kershaw for giving me the idea and recommending this website to do it.  I really hope that I keep up with it and put out some good stuff.  As to my first real blog, I plan on giving my own spin on the TV series “The Sopranos” following the final episode, so come back to check it out.  Overall, I hope this blog will provide top-notch critism of worldly topics and be a sort of guide to understanding this all to often smelly, foggy marsh we call the world.  Hopefully, I’ll even be able to live up to my name and be that strong watchman of the marsh.