Monday, May 27, 2013

Who are you again?

I've pinpointed what the issue is. (At least, one of them.)

What made running e-zines and then blogging easy when I was younger, was the anonymity of it. That's what I need to get back to, kind of, is feeling as freely inspired now, as I did then. Back then, you didn't worry about what you put up for publishing on the internet because hardly anyone was on it. Even when the digital diaries were really peaking, you were still under a pseudonym and for the most part, hidden from all of the immediate peers of yours who may have begun stumbling around the worldwide web. Now, everybody is on Facebook, it seems. The internet has no privacy, anymore.

(As an aside, it astounds me that the acronyms we used in chat rooms have become text speak and put on public titles, but sometimes people say it out loud - which is just bizarre. Whenever I hear some "omg" or "lol" come out of someone's mouth it makes me want to chloroform myself immediately.)

When I was younger, since no one I knew was online at the time, it was easy to write down thoughts and inspirations and art. The fact that a stranger would come to my page and be presented with this self-exhibition of the most private nature, and would, possibly be inspired and respond in kind with their artistic presence, was invigorating.

Now, although I have many thoughts, and ideas and arts dancing around in my head, I rarely ever write it down. I feel like I'm on filter now and anything might possibly be found offensive by someone close to me, basically family, gets monitored out and shucked away, even if I love it.

When I was younger, I always said I could never stop writing for someone. Love makes us grow and time makes us wise, if we let it. I have stopped some of my writing for many someones, and I am learning to work within those parameters as well as is possible. Hey, even race horses train with blinders, right?

It's the discipline that matters. To have a disciplined art of many things.

Saturday, May 18, 2013

How do you hold hands with the virtual?

Being a reader, I get asked a lot about owning a kindle, or fire(?) or whatever other e-reader unit there is out there. I really have no urge to own one. I get that it is far more convenient to carry 10 books in a slim piece of technology, than to stuff them inside your pillow case in order to smuggle them on your trip with you, but I like the tangible nature of real books and real magazines and real newspapers. Even Pinocchio knew that even if he walked/talked/lived like a "real" boy, he still wasn't one.

Lately, it seems that everybody is in a rush to get to the convenient, which is normally whatever is seen as less of a physical burden. But what, really, are we doing to our selves with all of this lack of physicality? It seems to reflect a general minimalistic and surface approach that seems to have grown over the way we live our lives. Everything must be sparkly and light and convenient. What is this going to do to our stories?

I remember (the old-timer begins) when altavista was the place to go search for sites on the net. It seemed so easy to find these beautiful webpages, mostly put together by teenage/early-20s girls, who would drape poetry all over their sites, mixed with journal entries, mixed with links to neat niche stores where you could buy japanese tea sets or mixing bowls, handmade zines or jewelry. Now everybody feels like their voice is important and it's so hard to even have the patience to look through all the myriad blogs/diaries/journals to find those gems of inner-to-outer dialogue that once ruled the web. Not to mention how much "text speak" aka the anagrams we made up in the beginnings of chat rooms that have turned into a verbal kudzu and overtaken the foliage of language some of us find so dear.

I think we need to play with more glitter and paste, send more cards, go back to making mix-tapes and sending paper stories to people. I want my daughter to feel the pride of creation, actual tangible creation.

I'm trying to express a longing and a sense of loss here that I can't even find the vocabulary to adequately define. Don't get me wrong, I am all about technological advances, and I am all for the internet. I've been here, riding the edges into the future, for about 2 decades now. I dig it.

I just don't think we should, as a society, be running so fast into the virtual forest that we forget all the real trees around us, so to speak.

Everybody - stop being so afraid to take up space with your Self and its accessories.