The older I get, the more I read and the more I read only leads me to suggest I know so little. I thought being an academic would mean I would accumulate knowledge but it doesn't work that way. It works more like a distillery, you refine and refine and refine, distilling as you go, maturing it over time, until the field of literary barley becomes a fine cut glass of single malt. Unfortunately, you have to endure a lot of dodgy whiskey along the way, sipping at ideas that otherwise shouldn't really have made their way into the glass - at least that is how it feels. And at the moment I can't say what stage I am at because there is no litmus test. I mean I might think I am a poitÃn or poteen, when someone else thinks I'm a Bells (which I would be happy with) even though I really want to be something more exotic. But then you find something else happens, you are busy playing the metaphor and discover that the discipline has turned from whiskey to fine wine and the discourse has changed... this song is about making whiskey and stuff:
