To continue as I started, with contentless, metaphor-riddled drivel concerning the nature and being of this blog, I will tackle the idea of 'web presence'.
It is pretty universally acknowledged at this point that if you want to be anything, you must find a place to be it. There are two points to this. 1) In a world of individual fame and the figure-heading of one to stand for a body of all, success is measured and created by public awareness. No one achieved anything if they couldn't be patted on the back afterwards - preferably by millions of strangers. 2) For a long time, there has been a right and a wrong place to present and publish oneself. Though the blogosphere may seem so much more impartial, one's setting is still very much everything. Where you are on the internet is a big deal. Or rather, where you are in terms of connection to elsewhere is a big deal.
There are those stories about great writers and artists and whathaveyous1 only being recognised for their achievements after death. Van Gogh is perhaps the go-to guy on this front. So here's the question: would Van Gogh have fared any better if he had started with a flickr or a Tumblr or any other blog or website carrying a seeming vendetta against the letter 'e'? How would greater public awareness, even on a small scale, affected the overall reception of Vincent's work pre- and post-mortem? And would his current standing of 'greatness' have been heightened or diluted, or maybe even revoked by the frame with which his presence was formed?
Now I am not going to ignore that there are still artists discovered and revered after their deaths catching media attention today. And I'm not going to suggest that there are not artists who make their way without having to tweet and tumbl and blog. Nor am I suggesting that there is anything wrong with these internet practices. What I'm exploring is just what effect the sheer ease of access for most people has had on the reception of created goods. Anyone can get a blog. Anyone can use it to promote their art. Anyone can sell that art to anyone as long as they both have something resembling internet access. It's pretty incredible. But at what point are there too many voices? At what point does the cacophony become so great that, for any person who has been told they need an online presence, the best they can hope for is to become a dull murmur in the audience, waiting vigilantly before the stage? And oh that stage looks pretty, but I wonder how beautiful it looks from upon it.
In a century's time, this place will be a graveyard of ghostly voices, calling out from the past, a monument to the interconnected, disconnected murmuring of people trying to find a place, trying to invite the deaf and the blind to watch and listen. And the gravestones are already popping up from this once fertile land. How long ago did you delete that Myspace account? Or is it still there, echoing in silence from the past?2
Why, I wonder, do we all do it? What is it you, dear reader, explorer and stranger, want from your blogs and your tumblrs and your little corners of little spaces in the big rooms of a big house? And who will be the Van Goghs in a hundred years? Which of the disembodied voices in this graveyard of mutters will be drawn out and put on display beside their work, like the glass-encased love letters of old poets? Will it be the ones that muttered loudest, longest or proudest? Will it be the ones that muttered sweetest? Or will all this muttering fall behind as the cacophony surges on, and, as always before, only the art remains?
1 I once tried being a 'whathaveyou'. It didn't work out. I didn't have enough thumbs.
2 Molly Lewis got their first.
Sunday, 29 January 2012
Saturday, 28 January 2012
Set sail! Set sail! We must set sail!
Greetings, Journeyman, Journeywoman, and/or Journeyother, whoever you may be.
On a cold, dim, quiet day, this 28th of January, 2012, I created a blog, but until a matter of moments ago, I didn't really know why. Perhaps I felt bored with my previous writing outlets. Perhaps I didn't feel like they were really outlets at all. Perhaps I was drawn to the idea of a fresh, new, shiny beginning - like a blank page patiently waiting for the first pen prick of ink. Maybe I had listened to the advice of friends and professionals and realised that a web presence is a must if you want anyone to pay any attention to anything you do. Maybe I wanted to compile and rebrand the messy, fraying threads of my past ventures into some recognisable, and yet all-together uniquely different, whole. Maybe I just wanted a little corner in a little box of a big room in a big house to call my own, somewhere secret, all to myself and the rest of the world.
I intend to explore all these options, and I won't deny that they are all true, but, as it turns out, the reason I made this blog is far simpler than any of them. You see, dear stranger, wayward traveller, explorer and wanderer of virtual seas: I felt like it; and, as it turns out, feeling like something - a writer, a musician, an architect, an artisan, a creator, a blogger - is a vital part of becoming that thing. If you can fool yourself into pretending long enough, you might just accidentally become your disguise.
I wear a lot of disguises, though they may often look similar. Yesterday, I felt like dedicating three hours of my time to being hunched over a laptop keyboard, desperately pleading with an uncompromising sentence to organise itself in a fashion half-respectable. A week ago, you may have found me - if you had been so bold to appear in my bedroom uninvited - struggling to find the missing sixth of the final chord of the verse progression of the song I was composing. Recently, I've felt like collaborating with others to write a tabletop RPG from scratch. It was the desire to try my hand at article writing that recently inspired the instigation of a collaborative editorial project on Facebook. I've dabbled with online video, bustled through the hectic streets of public journals, taken to the stage, and taken to the page, and all because, at the time, I felt like it.
Right now, I feel like blogging, and so, whatever it is that I am inspired to create here, I will become that creator, the blogger, to do so. I must wear that disguise. Some may consider this a capriciousness practice, for what use is a pair of hands that flit from one half-made object to another? What use is an 'I' that does not know how to be one thing? But it is not fickleness that leads the wayward traveller. It is feeling. Like a fuel, it drives you on, turning thought into idea, and idea into form - form into shape, and shape into substance. And every new venture and every new idea comes with its own feeling, strong and undeniable.
The beginning of all things is with a step. So we must all set sail. We must, or never take the voyage at all.
But I will return to my song when the feeling takes me again, and I shall spend yet more hours on that uncooperative sentence, and bit by bit, these objects will verge towards completion, as, bit by bit, new ones join them.
This blog is a map, and, like a dotted line, I will mark out the uneasy steps towards making manifest my imagination. Here I will muse on the making of things.
Into the blogosphere - that inimitable cacophony of voices - I set sail, nurtured by the voices of all those creators who have sent their work out into the world, like ships onto the sea, hoping one day to sail them home1.
1. Yes, that is a rephrasing of Danny DeVito's voice-over narration during the library scene in his adaptation of Roald Dahl's Matilda. I'm glad you noticed.
On a cold, dim, quiet day, this 28th of January, 2012, I created a blog, but until a matter of moments ago, I didn't really know why. Perhaps I felt bored with my previous writing outlets. Perhaps I didn't feel like they were really outlets at all. Perhaps I was drawn to the idea of a fresh, new, shiny beginning - like a blank page patiently waiting for the first pen prick of ink. Maybe I had listened to the advice of friends and professionals and realised that a web presence is a must if you want anyone to pay any attention to anything you do. Maybe I wanted to compile and rebrand the messy, fraying threads of my past ventures into some recognisable, and yet all-together uniquely different, whole. Maybe I just wanted a little corner in a little box of a big room in a big house to call my own, somewhere secret, all to myself and the rest of the world.
I intend to explore all these options, and I won't deny that they are all true, but, as it turns out, the reason I made this blog is far simpler than any of them. You see, dear stranger, wayward traveller, explorer and wanderer of virtual seas: I felt like it; and, as it turns out, feeling like something - a writer, a musician, an architect, an artisan, a creator, a blogger - is a vital part of becoming that thing. If you can fool yourself into pretending long enough, you might just accidentally become your disguise.
I wear a lot of disguises, though they may often look similar. Yesterday, I felt like dedicating three hours of my time to being hunched over a laptop keyboard, desperately pleading with an uncompromising sentence to organise itself in a fashion half-respectable. A week ago, you may have found me - if you had been so bold to appear in my bedroom uninvited - struggling to find the missing sixth of the final chord of the verse progression of the song I was composing. Recently, I've felt like collaborating with others to write a tabletop RPG from scratch. It was the desire to try my hand at article writing that recently inspired the instigation of a collaborative editorial project on Facebook. I've dabbled with online video, bustled through the hectic streets of public journals, taken to the stage, and taken to the page, and all because, at the time, I felt like it.
Right now, I feel like blogging, and so, whatever it is that I am inspired to create here, I will become that creator, the blogger, to do so. I must wear that disguise. Some may consider this a capriciousness practice, for what use is a pair of hands that flit from one half-made object to another? What use is an 'I' that does not know how to be one thing? But it is not fickleness that leads the wayward traveller. It is feeling. Like a fuel, it drives you on, turning thought into idea, and idea into form - form into shape, and shape into substance. And every new venture and every new idea comes with its own feeling, strong and undeniable.
The beginning of all things is with a step. So we must all set sail. We must, or never take the voyage at all.
But I will return to my song when the feeling takes me again, and I shall spend yet more hours on that uncooperative sentence, and bit by bit, these objects will verge towards completion, as, bit by bit, new ones join them.
This blog is a map, and, like a dotted line, I will mark out the uneasy steps towards making manifest my imagination. Here I will muse on the making of things.
Into the blogosphere - that inimitable cacophony of voices - I set sail, nurtured by the voices of all those creators who have sent their work out into the world, like ships onto the sea, hoping one day to sail them home1.
1. Yes, that is a rephrasing of Danny DeVito's voice-over narration during the library scene in his adaptation of Roald Dahl's Matilda. I'm glad you noticed.
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