And this time, there's more to it than just my usual procrastination. I have to admit, I feel conflicted about the very notion of a blog. Apart from the fact that it's just a horrible word that sticks in your throat, there's something about it that's simply.... icky.
I know I'm not the only one who feels this way. For a start, just today I read this in a great new blog by a fellow Mancunian, Sally, entitled nine chains to the moon:
I feel peculiar when I imagine strangers reading it. When I think of it I get a kind of creeping shivery excited sick feeling...Is it very narcissistic to want to write a blog? I feel more vulnerable than gratified at the moment.
I know exactly how she feels. Here I am, with the very tip of my toe touching the water, and right now it's feeling pretty cold and hostile. For starters, it's so different from writing a personal diary or journal: Anne Frank once memorably wrote "paper has more patience than people" yet it's quite clear to me that this just ain't the same deal. When you write a blog, or anything online, you set it free into the world, and that has consequences: as Sally points out, you are vulnerable, and that's a very scary thought. But even more importantly, the very act of writing it at all seems to hint at a particularly repellent sort of egoism or narcissism that makes me feel quite uncomfortable with myself.
Keri Smith, the author/illustrator/guerilla artist whose fantastic blog The Wish Jar is a long-standing favourite of mine is similarly aware of the paradoxes and conflicts wrapped up in the practice of writing a blog. In a post from November 2007, she asks herself:
…why does blogging (and reading blogs) make me feel icky now? i've always believed in the power of people sharing their stories, in turn helping others to feel more human and validated in their own life… issue #1 for me in all of this is the false sense of intimacy that is created within and by this medium… and issue #2 is that many times the blogging world feels more like a big popularity contest, than a true medium of creativity. the goal for many to gain as many readers as possible.
Yep, the key word again. It's just icky and there's no getting around it.
Like so many of us, what Keri seems to be searching for is a sense of authenticity, of true creativity, of communication. Yet this so often seems to get lost or distorted as we attempt to negotiate the tangled labyrinth of the web, with its corporate sponsorships, hidden advertisements and viral marketing strategies, and all we're left with is a profound sense of alienation. That's full-on, full-blown Marxist/Hegelian alienation we're talking about here. And like Keri, that's absolutely not what I'm about. I'm not a business: I'm not interested in marketing myself. I don't want to participate in a 'popularity contest' - in fact, given my all-too-often deeply ambivalent feelings about my own artistic work, I'd actually prefer it if no one read this at all, and certainly no one I actually know In Real Life (to be honest, the very thought of it gives me the heebie-jeebies).
So at this point, I suppose I have to ask myself: why am I doing it at all? Wouldn't it be better just to carry on as I always have? I've been writing diaries prolifically since I was 13 years old for myself and no one else - why do I need to do this too?
I don't know... but sometimes it feels good just to take a running jump and leap right into the water...
Right now, a lot of my daily existence feels very planned and regimented. I'm working full time in a new and very demanding job and I'm also studying part time so most of my spare time is taken up doing pretty mind-melting academic work. What I'm looking for is a space in my day-to-day doings where I can be a bit more playful - to be experimental, or to do something different... and just see what happens without any plans or expectations or consequences. Ostensibly this blog is about books, hence the title which I've borrowed from Walter Benjamin's 1931 essay, but actually we'll see what happens. Who knows what will happen? I like the uncertainty of that.
So writing a blog is definitely icky. But perhaps it can be icky in a good way. A bit like eating too much ice-cream or an entire bag of Haribo by yourself while watching re-runs of The OC or listening to Girls Aloud, or wearing leg-warmers. Clearly none of which I would ever do. Well not all at once, anyway.
I think I can safely say that my toe has officially entered the water. Perhaps that's bravery enough for one day.
I know exactly how she feels. Here I am, with the very tip of my toe touching the water, and right now it's feeling pretty cold and hostile. For starters, it's so different from writing a personal diary or journal: Anne Frank once memorably wrote "paper has more patience than people" yet it's quite clear to me that this just ain't the same deal. When you write a blog, or anything online, you set it free into the world, and that has consequences: as Sally points out, you are vulnerable, and that's a very scary thought. But even more importantly, the very act of writing it at all seems to hint at a particularly repellent sort of egoism or narcissism that makes me feel quite uncomfortable with myself.
Keri Smith, the author/illustrator/guerilla artist whose fantastic blog The Wish Jar is a long-standing favourite of mine is similarly aware of the paradoxes and conflicts wrapped up in the practice of writing a blog. In a post from November 2007, she asks herself:
…why does blogging (and reading blogs) make me feel icky now? i've always believed in the power of people sharing their stories, in turn helping others to feel more human and validated in their own life… issue #1 for me in all of this is the false sense of intimacy that is created within and by this medium… and issue #2 is that many times the blogging world feels more like a big popularity contest, than a true medium of creativity. the goal for many to gain as many readers as possible.
Yep, the key word again. It's just icky and there's no getting around it.
Like so many of us, what Keri seems to be searching for is a sense of authenticity, of true creativity, of communication. Yet this so often seems to get lost or distorted as we attempt to negotiate the tangled labyrinth of the web, with its corporate sponsorships, hidden advertisements and viral marketing strategies, and all we're left with is a profound sense of alienation. That's full-on, full-blown Marxist/Hegelian alienation we're talking about here. And like Keri, that's absolutely not what I'm about. I'm not a business: I'm not interested in marketing myself. I don't want to participate in a 'popularity contest' - in fact, given my all-too-often deeply ambivalent feelings about my own artistic work, I'd actually prefer it if no one read this at all, and certainly no one I actually know In Real Life (to be honest, the very thought of it gives me the heebie-jeebies).
So at this point, I suppose I have to ask myself: why am I doing it at all? Wouldn't it be better just to carry on as I always have? I've been writing diaries prolifically since I was 13 years old for myself and no one else - why do I need to do this too?
I don't know... but sometimes it feels good just to take a running jump and leap right into the water...
Right now, a lot of my daily existence feels very planned and regimented. I'm working full time in a new and very demanding job and I'm also studying part time so most of my spare time is taken up doing pretty mind-melting academic work. What I'm looking for is a space in my day-to-day doings where I can be a bit more playful - to be experimental, or to do something different... and just see what happens without any plans or expectations or consequences. Ostensibly this blog is about books, hence the title which I've borrowed from Walter Benjamin's 1931 essay, but actually we'll see what happens. Who knows what will happen? I like the uncertainty of that.
So writing a blog is definitely icky. But perhaps it can be icky in a good way. A bit like eating too much ice-cream or an entire bag of Haribo by yourself while watching re-runs of The OC or listening to Girls Aloud, or wearing leg-warmers. Clearly none of which I would ever do. Well not all at once, anyway.
I think I can safely say that my toe has officially entered the water. Perhaps that's bravery enough for one day.
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