Mighty Like a Rose

I really enjoyed reading Elvis Costello's musical memoir, Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink.  The book was given to me over a year ago by a friend who is a much better gift-giver than I am.  I was a little skeptical about reading a musician's memoir because I don't particularly like reading memoirs in the first place (though I seem to read an awful lot of them for all that) and because of the way that I tend to think about music, but I'll come back to that.
One of the things that stood out to me is that this reads more like a full autobiography than just a memoir of Costello's musical career.  He weaves personal and family history along with discussions of his lyrics and the music that inspired him into the overarching narrative of his life in music.  But this makes it sound more organized than it is.  At times, the book reads more like an oral history because Costello will veer off from one story to another based on his own associative logic.  The book is more-or-less chronological, but it takes minor detours from time to time.
I spent a lot of time while in college searching out Elvis Costello's music and searching specifically for vinyl albums, so a lot of this felt very familiar.  This makes me realize that there are whole swaths of his music that I still don't know.  While I know that this is all out there, I still think of Elvis in his knock-kneed rocker stance on the cover of My Aim is True.  This memoir felt like my own personal history in a way as I read about his recording Delivery Man, and I hoped that he would mention something from the concert he played in support of that album in Columbus, OH in 2005 that I attended.  This also made me realize that I still think of When I was Cruel and Delivery Man (released in 2002 and 2005, respectively) as his "new" albums.
I have a way of thinking about music as abstraction.  I want to think about music apart from the musician in the sense that any art is separable from the artist.  When music, or any art, is abstracted from its source it is easier to enjoy and also to criticize.  When I think and write about music, I am moved by the personal experience and the connections that it forges with others.  I want others to experience and enjoy the music in the same way that I do.  The shared experience of music is a less distorted medium of communication than most for being abstracted.  Songs are encapsulations of energy, thought, and emotion.  They convey a lot about the artist, of course, but also about what we latch on to and this is why so many subcultures generate around music.  The things that we like define us as much or more than the things we do.  When I was young I connected so much of my thought, fashion, and aesthetics with the music that I listened to.
This post is perilously close to going off the rails as I just deleted a paragraph about Dick Hebdige's Subculture: the Meaning of Style.  It is an excellent book but would have lead down a path I don't want to go right now.
Bringing this all back around, Costello does not do what I feared he would do.  He wrote sensitively and honestly about his life and work.  He didn't disillusion me and I do appreciate that.