Attitude(s) to Blogs
Gloomy colours today to reflect the mood outside.
Of course one has to admit that this is most welcome in the garden, and as we speak, I can hear the plants rejoicing (even the herbs on my windowsill, as I have a lavendar with a particular intolerance of too much water, recently having developed fluffy mould which caused me no end of concern until my wise green-fingered mother suggested letting her sit outside to dry out in the sun, well imagine if I had of done that today, my little lavendar would have been most disgruntled, and no doubt refused to grow at all).
But anyway, that wasn't really the subject in my mind as I sat down to share my thoughts with those good enough to visit the garden and enter into my thought bubble awhile.
No, I wanted to share my thoughts on blogs, because since finding myself drawn into the enticing world of virtually represented inner worlds, I recalled a conversation with the two first visitors to the garden, in which I was most disparaging about excessive cyber communication, not comprehending the point of a blog, and concerned that this absorportion in communication mediated via a screen and a keypad was, if not damaging the more real face-to-face interactions between people, at least limiting them, encouraging us to behave in an increasingly insular fashion. I'm sure there were more points I was making, as we sat around the dining room table in the house whose garden we had erected tents in, on the 2nd night of the epic Easter Wolds Way walk....but alas, and also, as ever, my memory fails me.
So I had been thinking about this negative perspective in relation to my dawning realisation of the advantages of the blog....and I realised that in a way it enables a different kind of communication, by encouraging friends to interact with representations of each others' interior worlds, and rather than drily limiting the sensory involvement in interaction, it enhances the scope for us to represent ourselves visually, as well as aurally, and of course verbally. And because we are not writing for any particular person's ear, as with an email, but for a general person, and also for ourselves, what seeps out of the blog we create, is not the particular aspect of ourselves that is drawn out in relation to the dynamic that exists between, and is created by, our interaction with any given individual, but any, perhaps all, the aspects within ourselves, assuming a blog is maintained over a period of time, thus allowing for changes in disposition.
And I thought that as I had previously been so disparaging, and yet in my own mind had recognised a development in my attitude, I should share that development with those to whom I had initially expressed the initial uninformed attitude. That's all that comes to mind on the subject for the moment, but I would be most interested to hear other, complementary, contrasting or tangential thoughts on the matter from those gracious enough to spend time in my garden.
posted by Lisa Charlotte @ 8:35 am
11 Comments:
Ah yes, it is true, the blog can be such an interesting tool of expression and record of our inner workings. So often I have thoughts that I forget and do not share, those of the fleeting kind. And I find occasionally recording such things, though potentially a little insignificant on the grand scale of things is beneficial to my awareness of my own self....
Although it can gobble up a gulfs of time, when there's so much other stuff I can be focussing me energies on too!
today at work i found a text file on my computer that I had written about 5 weeks ago containing some things that had occurred to me that morning on the way to work tht iw ould like to blog about. the list has 5 items. that morning there had been a hige rain and thunderstorm nd a poer cut it was very exciting. problem is at the end of the day all my energies seemd to have been gone. cos you see its hard to live on the internet cos we only have eues for it an sometimes ears, and it make out eyes hurt. and we type and there are keys. now this is all abvious. I seem to be writing and writing. sausages. but, the contents of the text file were:
the genius of ipod
muse is my muse
the desire to share everything
the excitement of storms
now what these were all about was: 1) ipod picksing random music for me, sometimes it's so RIGHT in its choices of randomness at that moment, it appears a dj genius. hmm, not so interesing.
2) musi is my muse. no idea what that was.
3) the desire to share experiences. now this is pretty fundamental. if you're in you car and you ipod picks some amazing combination of tracks, and you go "yes!!" then there's no one there, tha can be a bit annoying cos you want like to share it. but then, with whom? and what about al those poor unfortunate othetrs who you canl;t share it with. mmmmm...
4) the excitement of storms. isn't it exciting when there's a storm.
Now I have probably just written a load of utter shut but i'm going to hit post anyway.
ALSO i did you know my mumn's friend sent her a birthday card in 1968.
and later that year, she sent it back, the same card, on her friend's birthday. then in 1969 it came back.and so on, it continues to this day, each year a new autograph. sometimes just "love Stella (1973)". sometimes a little comment like "it was nice seeing you last week! Love from Jan (1992)". it's so nice!, and I JUST thought (like 3 seconds ago) how cool it would be if everyone did that. but then maybe it wouldn't be so speciale.
Can I just apologise for the appalling typos, it is rather impolite of me. (Is that how you spell appalling?) Is such a thing acceptable. Do stream-of-consciousness authors go back later and correct the spelling? I suppose James Joyce didn't use a computer and it's hard to make typos with a pen. Or pencil.
Isn't it interesting how all this stuff I am here writing now is just adding up at the bottom of one of your comments pages, like a relatively insiginificant place. It's very liberating.
It's like I'm writing you you but also showing off a bit at the same time!!!
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I can see you're enjoying liberating yourself Nick!
It is true, storms are ace. This morning there was a strange one on my way across the fields. There'd be rain for 30 seconds, then, once I'd put my hood up, it stopped. AfterI took my hood down, it'd be dry for a little while and then rain for another 30 seconds, until I put my hood up again. I felt like someone was playing a practical joke on me.
Oh and you said there were 5 things on your list, but you only noted down 4! Is there another you're not revealing to us???!
That last comment Nicobob about showing off made me laugh out loud and there was no one here to hear it. I thought of you as a big kid doing tricks to impress his parents and their friends who write the same birthday card every year, and look Mum and Dad, this is an iPod and I bet you don't know how it works cos you're not of the 'cyber youth' but I am and I know how it works and so I must be ace and I want you to know it.
Oh Hi Richi you posted your comments as I was in the middle of writing mine. Funny to hear you tell of the storm because I was completely unaware of anything at all outside, sitting here in my dressing gown on nick's leather chair being an e-geek, and the rainy patches you described were only just a stone's throw (with a strong cricketer's arm) from m attention if I were to bother looking which I didn't.
And also I think I agree about blogging being liberating. In a similar way to diary-writing being liberating. Just allowing the stream of consciousness to flow I think is a healthy thing because you get out a lot of the things that perhaps would otherwise tay stuck in. I feel when I am writing that I am exercising my mind. And that might be why my vocabularly once in a while gets a little pretentious, because I am feeling free to let flow the kind of long-winded potentially convoluted thoughts that I rarely feel free to share, indeed often do not feel inspired to realise. Ace!
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