WARNING: SLOW BLOGGING CONTINUES...

Normal blogging (or semi-normal, or you-know-what-I-mean-by-normal blogging) will resume Tuesday.

In the mean time, I'll re-post some metablog thoughts, my opinions on the whys of blogging.

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What's missing in the discussion and debate about blogging?  The idea that art imitates life, and that art is media, literature;  literature and media is art.  That the context of life circumstances is what gives meaning to art/media content; it's experienced at two levels, not only by the artist/creator, but by the observer.

Blogging isn't really a new art/media; humans have been logging for as long as there has been media to support our need to create some expression.  The first guy drawing his log on the cave walls surely got a lot of attention; and others within the cave community must have rushed to copy this effort once they found their own personal value in this effort.  As modern observers, we appreciate the content and the context both.  Were these early cave drawings art or diaries, literature?  do we care that these expressions are one or all of these? 

As we evolved, so did our logging, through diaries and literature.  We could capture them through writing and on paper, now able to share the once singular and insular with many others outside the cave.  This transition from stationary to moving mirrors the context of human life.  The blog now mirrors our evolution to networked environments.

Would some of us allow that "The Diary of Anne Frank" is art, as a published text, literature, or media? many of us would agree.

Would we say that Anne Frank's writing about trivial day-to-day events was not meaningful on a micro level, but on a macro level? could we agree she had no intent of making a political statement in writing in her diary?  What makes Anne's diary important, poignant, is the truth she expresses and the context in which we find her truth.

Anne did not write to be a politician.  She wrote to give voice to her life, which was, needless to say, shrift of opportunity for expression.  Perhaps she felt some day that someone else would read and share this expression, or maybe she felt she was sharing it already with a higher power.  (The first guy drawing on the cave wall probably didn't care what the clan thought, he needed to express himself.)

Anne's voice, her truths, have meaning beyond that which she experienced herself day-to-day in her short life, because of our ability to read, digest, and place into a larger context.

Much of what is posted in blogs is just day-to-day living -- feelings, observations, rants -- given voice.  Western culture in particular does much to suppress our humanity, through the numbing of technology applied every day.  Blogs are a method of expressing our humanity, getting back our voice through the very tools that can dehumanize us.  Just as art and literature can be singular or collaborative expressions of our humanity, so can blogging.  For the purpose of expression alone, blogging is a positive, creative power.  Somewhere, in all of the blogs, we blog readers find expressions we put into our own context, finding value.  That too, is a positive, creative power. 

In moving to blogging, we're merely changing the vehicle, the media, not the lives we're living nor the context that is suggested by the blogger or created by the reader.  We've changed our lives.  Blogs only bear witness.

(And yes, some of us would rather bear witness to something else, somewhere else.  It's a free society, free media -- go make your expression and context somewhere else.)

11:25:15 PM    comment []