Where we write at night when...
Yeeeah | Yeeeah | Yeeeah | Yeeeah | I walked 47 miles on barbed-wire, | Cobra-snake for a necktie. | Built a house by the roadside, | Made of rattlesnake hide. | Brand new chimney up on top, | Made out of human skulls. | Come on baby take a walk with me, | Tell me how do you blog?
I’m getting some good answers and some good interpretations of what the question "How do you blog?" actually means. But I haven’t heard from you. I don’t know what to say except that your participation is important to me and I will be very proud to be able to weave your answer into the growing tapestry.[...]
I know you are busy and that this is a particularly busy time of year. That said, I’m still hoping to hear from you soon with your simple answer to the puzzling question: How do you blog?
Frank Paynter
I was going to fob him off with the usual answer; "Why? Who the hell wants to know?" but, for an old curmudgeon, he's pretty good at the 'obsequious thing', eh? Even if it's to the same list as the original mail. So let's give him what we think he wants, my precious-s-s-s... I do so spontaneously, Frank, from within the constraints of long working hours, a slow and expensive connection, and a dysfunctional family setup that saps more than its share of time and energy. Blogging takes more time than most admit, but perhaps I could short-circuit many of my more laborious habits (washing, eating, breathing...). Using my home PC, Blogger, and the world's most expensive hole-in-the-wall connection (56kbps), I write in EditPad Lite, code maually, edit Web-found graphics in a freebie of PaintShopPro and upload to the server using FileZilla.
I generally derive subject matter from a news item or an entry on a blog. Like Brian, "When I start a post I have no idea where I'm headed." (With his post on this topic, Brian becomes the only podcaster I'll listen to. D'ya people all speak funny? No wonder English has gone to the dogs—Matrullo excepted, of course.) Umm, yep, while interesting articles may elicit no response from me, a seemingly inane comment or observation might initiate an essay, a story, a hunt for further articles, or a diatribe. Interestingly, a greater focus on such spontaneity sees me blogging less, for longer, and more for my blogroll and me than any wide audience.
Hence screeds or reports from the Jesus Bunker, the Eternal Mystery of Father Christopher, RageBoy and Christopher Locke (the author guy), surfing safaris up the Zambezi, the Nile, and the mighty Congo River, etc. I have met Kurtz, Saddam and many other interesting people. I have been to Mogadishu, Luanda and Baghdad. I have spoken to George W. Bush and his live-in lover Big Dick and, as a respected member of the Jesus Bunker press corps, I have bedded some of the world's most beautiful women, including Sweet Melinda, Saint Annie, Kate, Carmella, Mother Mary, Sister Jacqueline and Angel (who just got back from the coast)...
By the way, you tell Gary Turner he owes me big. He'd not be MD of that bloody software outfit had I not lent him spine, a huge fucking caber and a great pot of steaming porridge liberally laced with salt...
Perhaps, in my autumn years, I'm moving from Kafka to several millenia after the nuclear winter. It's where all the kids are at these days.
"Canute @ ... damn!"
Tombstone head and a graveyard mind, | Just 22 and I don't mind dying. | Rode around the town with a rattlesnake whip, | Come on baby don't give me no lip. | How do you blog, now? | How do you blog? | How do you blog, child? | I said: How, baby, how do you blog?
Lest it be forgotten, as good things so often are, I blog by the grace and goodwill of others. Blogmother Shelley Powers hosted this site for close on two years, and it cost her... erm, plenty I guess, but at a time when I couldn't afford it, it cost me nothing. Whether Shell likes it or not, this blog's as much hers as anybody else's.
With a domain change from BlogSpot to Shelley and one or two further changes while on her server, I've left a string of dead links and broken sites behind me. I guess the 'hit-and-run domain' suits my style, but it plays havoc with virtual friendships. For Christ's sake... nah, for mine, if you've yet to update your link to this site, do so now...
I'd hate to serve only as a link farm. That's esentially what's happening over at BlogSpot (the other domains are dead). I can't change the template over there. Also, because I'm dealing with autoresponse software, communication with a human being at Blogger is impossible. Strangely, although the page is a shambles, I get many more visitors there than I do here. Hmm...then again, maybe it's not that strange.
But, don't worry, your fifty-sixth link from this domain is safe for now. I'll pull the lot only when feeling particularly bloody minded.
Change that link. Please.
Okay, back to business. The 'how' and 'why' of blogging tend to merge. While most critics decry blogging relationships' validity or depth, they sure as hell beat—in a busy world—that feeling we all sometimes experience, i.e. "Nobody understands me." Published to the Web, everybody is assured somebody out there is likely to recognise themselves, to a greater or lesser degree, in whatever's written. And, yes, scanning the above, I really mean "whatever".
As to style, again somewhat paradoxically given the spontaneous nature of the blogs, I write with difficulty and the greatest circumspection. This need not be a bad thing. Having, over four years, found my intent and focus (voice?), I've come to rely more heavily on that which Anne Mathewson last year called "'invisible threads' and 'sympathetic fibers' - those human connections made along the way." Read that one again. She's not speaking of links. The hyperlink, as David put it, forms the geography of the Web. People, in a very real way, populate it.
Having been through flame wars, misunderstandings, accusations and counter-accusations (I'm a terrorist-supporting, anti-Semitic, anti-American, homophobic, red-meat eating Christian fundametalist, sexist and racist), and the back-channelling needed to find common ground, I'll remain forever mindful of what I write. This mindfulness can have surprising results. Loving ambiguity, parallels, allegory and humour as much as I do, I try to write as openly and as 'nakedly' as possible. However, to counter misinterpretation, I've become obscure.
The resulting tension has had some suprising results. It's led me to interesting places and spaces.
Happily, like you Frank, I belong to a circle of people, most of whom have no difficulty deciphering my encoded language. These people comprise my audience, those for and to whom I write, whether they read it or not. And, given their extraordinary intellectual and perceptual powers, I need—while indulging ambiguity—to be as honest as possible.
They smell bullshit at 10,000 miles.
Over the years, I've seen enormous change in both the nature and content of the blogs (the mindless rise of the information cascade, the degeneration to sameness, the dumbing down, aggregation, call it what you will...), as well as the type of relationship enjoyed by those who write together. But 'more of the same' has barely touched the class of 2001/2. Minds hammered to propriety on the anvil of academe continue to rein and lend respectability to unfettered geniuses howling from the hilltops of our broader consciousness.
A hole-in-the-wall blogger who gets by, I'm fortunate to enjoy the company of both.
Night is dark, the sky was blue, | Down the alley the ice wagon flew. | Hit a bump, somebody screamed, | Should'a heard just what I seen. | Do you blog me, babe? | Do you blog her, yeah | Do you blog me, babe? | Do you blog it, yeah | Yeeeeeah...
The Doors | How Do You Blog?
