Bloggers blog. Writers write. Bears bear. Bees be.
My bloglines has something close to a thousand unread posts for me to catch up on. All of you, bloggers I know, bloggers whose blogs I actually comment on, bloggers whose blogs I merely haunt wraithlike and undeclared, have been writing up a maelstrom of wonderful words while I have been wading through minor floods, fixing the kitchen sink, driving long distances and painting walls at 11 pm. This is what happens when you’re gone for a while. The world floods with words.
Of course, this is what we do, bloggers all. We write. Long posts or short, deep and meaningful, short and sweet, YouTube finds, poems, photos, thoughts, one perfect quote. One earthshaking thought. Or a knock-knock joke invented by the resident seven year old comic. We write.
This is not incidental, especially for those of us who have harbored secret (and not so secret) desires for the writing life. That more days than not, we are crafting words and letting them go for the world to read.
It can feel overwhelming, this deluge of words from the unedited masses. So many writers! Flickr is like this. So many photographs! And not just snaps, but piles and piles of photographs which skulk at the edges of art, or even more than that, land splat in the middle of art, drinking martinis and wearing shades. Yet, these snippets of art are just some person with her camera, just some bloke with an eye for color.
Does it devalue art or literature, to have all us peons typing away, snapping away, cheerfully, purposefully flinging our unexclusive, unpriced art into the virtual world? On the contrary, this is the best of what the internet can be, that the multitudes of writers and artists and beauty makers can now ply their soul’s trade without stopping to pass through the needle’s eye of editor, agent or seller. Of course there is dross there. Of course there are sentimental, badly focused, badly framed photographs, blog posts which make no sense, drawings of puppies with strangely large eyes. Who cares!
Artists all. Writers all. My world is richer for the flow of your words, your art, your music. Flickr is a storehouse of stunning beauty and so is the blogworld. I may not, especially now, always write to tell you that you moved me, spoke to me, lifted me past my tired and tiring life. But I am always reading, and always grateful.
you always manage to express the thoughts on the edges of my mind in a way that makes me gasp with delight …
: )
We once had an argument about whether democracy was self evidently good. I wasn’t sure. Neither am I sure that democratic writing is self evidently good. Partly, the reason is that the pause for self criticism and evaluation which is imposed by an editor and publisher is removed by the blog. There is no editor. There is no pause. And that pause for reflection is a good thing. I suspect that in our societies we ought to think a bit more, and talk a bit less. After all, not everything that is written is worth reading. Not everything that can be said is worth listening to. Not everyone’s opinion is legitimate.
There’s some published material that isn’t worth reading or looking at; I like celebrating the act of creation. We have the choice of discrimination when viewing or reading the results, yes?
That rocked.
Thanks. I needed it.
I think of my blogs as a great big nit circle, and there are conversations I listen in on, and others I overlook because there’s only so much atention I have, even for fascinating rhythmns. I do go on hiatuses from time to time, and get overwhelmed when I return, but then I just start fresh with the most recent, rather that try to reconstruct everything I have missed (except for my mostest most favorites). Just like it was me sitting in a big circle, with all my friends, knitting and chatting away.
There are blogs I think of as approaching art, though, for their knitting, their pictures, or their inspiration. But they are as rare as jewels in the great wide blogosphere. Yours among them.
thank you so much for writing these words. i feel so much the same, now that summer is calling and yet i want to stay connected…
I loved this post.
(don’t you feel stressed with 1000 blog posts not yet read? That would be a whole lot of pressure for me!)
thanks for your comment about the move. I hope yours goes well, also. it’s not all bad, but not all that easy, either.
Awesome blog you have. I agree with you! More art the better! I noticed that you have a NaNoWriMo reference on your site. I just wrote a post yesterday on my blog about writing a book with some helpful resources. Just thought I’d mention it in case you might find something helpful in there.