Thursday, August 12, 2004

another blog, but why?

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mood: thoughtful
music: m83 - dead cities, red seas & lost ghosts; depeche mode - exciter
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Here we are then, a new blog. The question, of course, is to what end. I spent the day doing nothing and feeling a bit grumpy, and it occurred to me that I’m missing this outlet. I have monkeyinfez for photography and essays, falling down for socio-political rants, longshoredrift for random culture creation, but no direct, personal blog.

I was never really sure if I wanted one before; I’m still not sure. But I’ve recently been reading some friends’ blogs and realised both how enriching an experience it can be, and what a good way to get to know people it is. I also recall someone mentioning how they like to have a different website for each part of their personality. I quite like this philosophy. It’s certainly true that I could just post everything on one site, but it’s quite nice to have a little network of different sites for different moods and topics; almost like an electronic rendering of the brain with its different lobes, hyperlinks taking on the role of the electronic impulses which whisk your thoughts from one region to the next.

I’ve always kept a notepad, not really a diary but a repository for random thoughts and events. I’ve never really had the compulsion to share this in an unabridged format before (nor would most of it probably be that interesting), but I have recently found it very interesting to look back over old jottings. I’m planning to put some of these back-entries on here as well, just to keep things interesting and to help me in my ongoing quest to not forget everything I’ve ever been. This idea may have been encouraged by the Pepys Diary blog project – well worth looking at if you’ve not seen it before.

Writing is the other thing I’ve been missing lately. It’s been a long time since I wrote anything more sustained than a few hundred words of blog, but I’m not sure why this is. Again the thought has been put into my head by a friend, I recently read a story of hers and thought it was brilliant (thanks Ali). More so I was impressed she was actually showing it to me as this is one of the major steps I’ve never really managed to overcome with fiction. I have no problem posting an immense essay on some ridiculous topic thanks to a whim I had for a couple of hours, but any fiction I produce always seems difficult to share. Partly, no doubt, because I never think it’s quite as good as I’d like. But also because it never feels finished, in fact much of what I write is just short vignettes rather than sustained fictions. So, following tall Paul’s example of a blog about trying to get some creative projects off the ground – which is helping him do exactly that - I’m going to post some of it here.

In fact, there are a whole load of philosophical issues surrounding the whys of blogging, I’m planning to get into these in more detail in a rather more extended essay sometime soon. There’s something to look forward to!

So, mission statement in a nutshell: what does your soul look like (pt 4) is diary-style creative space which is to act as an outlet for all my gubbins which have no place elsewhere. It doesn’t have to be here, it doesn’t have to be read, but the mere fact of having it and using it will hopefully spur me onwards and, perhaps, help with those all important issues of legitimacy.

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So, what’s been happening lately? Today was always earmarked as a hangover day, but I actually didn’t feel too bad when I got up and thought I might get something done. After a while I did start feeling quite bad, so all plans of doing anything except watching a couple of films went right out the window. I didn’t even feel energetic enough to look at the wedding photos I did last week (sorry Si & Sue). Managed to fit in a great afternoon nap though! Work is going to be pretty knackering for the next couple of days as the academic stock arrives (there were about 9 trolleys of the stuff yesterday), so I think this time-out was pretty necessary.

Except now I feel like I’ve just wasted the day. It comes down to that fine balance between consumption and creation. If no one spent any time consuming culture then there’d be little point in creating our own. The creation may be fun and rewarding, but without any possibility of sharing our works we’d all ultimately stagnate. On the other hand, spend too much time just watching and you start to feel empty, as though you’re just a conduit through which life, and specifically other peoples’ life, is flowing. Life becomes a passive exercise, a voyeuristic journey to nothing.

I did have a good time last night though. Thanks to everyone who came out, and to those who kept buying me birthday drinks. And Becky, sorry if I talked utter crap at you on the tram home… in hindsight I think I was a little more drunk than I realised at the time.

Well, that feels like enough for now. Well done to anyone who has actually bothered to read all of this, but then most of my reason for doing this is for myself, any external readers are a bonus rather than an aim or priority.

1 Comments:

Blogger paulhd said...

not sure having a blog is helping my creative endeavours, it's hard to say. It is nice complaining about my work though so the blog is serving some purpose.
Can't say showing people my work has ever been a problem, but I understand some people don't like doing it. There's no point in doing this stuff if you don't let people see it, art, good bad or mediocre is about communication, shutting it away in a drawer means you might as well not bother. Anyway, you're putting stuff online, so I guess my point is pretty pointless really!
Me, Liam and Sam used to meet up for a while to read and comment on each other's work, it was actually pretty good, but for a variety of reasons it kind of fell apart, something I think all three of us regret. I think my blog might be some sort of substitute for not meeting up with Sam and Liam anymore.

15/8/04 6:50 pm  

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