19 June 2005

WHAT’S A BLOG FOR?   What’s a blog for?  Discuss…   As I was winding up Friday’s post, I read back over what I’d written & thought (not for the first time): ‘Of what interest is any of this going to be to anyone?’  A gentle ramble around the perimeter of the English traditional music scene is unlikely to stimulate the imagination or grip the attention of a broad reading public. If I were on 200+ hits a day then I might scoop up a few who shared this somewhat arcane area of interest. But (Google’s constant snooping apart) my daily hit total has been stuck on double figures for a couple of years now. I don’t get within a country mile of the broad constituency addressed by, say, Filchyboy or World O’Crap.    Now, I don’t have a problem with residency on the lower floors of the Salon condo because I am lucky enough to be visited there by la crème de la crème, both within Salon & from the wider blogosphere. But gibbering away about personal fads & fancies, sometimes at great length, must on occasion try the patience of the most indulgent of e-pals. And stumbling around without a thematic map or topical compass is hardly going to seduce the occasional visitor into joining the club.   And herein is contained the blogger’s dilemma.  Is a weblog a stamp album or a broadsheet? Is it a receptacle for the quirks & peccadilloes of its proprietor, a desk diary that just happens always to be left open, or is it a finely tuned broadcast medium, sensitive to the tastes & tendencies of its readers?    Once upon a time – well, not so very long ago, in fact - addressing that question mattered to me a good deal. At the age of 11 I had decided that I was going to be a writer &, in the decades since, I had never quite reneged on that pledge to myself. I had equivocated, procrastinated & generally fannied around, intending always to begin That Novel, compile that Slim Volume of verse, research that series of Hard-hitting Articles. But not just yet - work would begin in earnest during the next school break, or in hermetic solitude over a writers’ weekend in the Lake District, or, at the latest, when I retired.   And then, suddenly, blogging came along. I’d read about the phenomenon of the weblog, was casually interested, &, in an idle moment, stumbled via Google across Salon Blogs.  Within a week I was hooked. It mattered not a wit that I hadn’t a clue how to manipulate the intricacies & eccentricities of the RU software. I blundered & stumbled around in the dark, entirely dependent on the kindness of strangers, until eventually the first few tentative Patteran Pages were upstreamed. Suddenly I was a writer; after 4 decades I was actually fulfilling my solemn (& no doubt very po-faced) promise to myself.   But (& here’s the nub of it): it wasn’t at all how I’d planned it.  I was not finally digging the foundations of That Novel, gathering material for the Slim Volume or typing up the Hard-hitting Articles. There was no deep drawing in of breath & careful arranging of pen & paper on the desk. I simply started writing: reflections on the then fomenting 2nd Gulf War, bits of autobiography, poems new & revised, re-cycled jokes, personal philosophy, accounts of the gradual approach of Reuben – fragments, witterings, blatherings – just Stuff. And the joy of it was the discovery of dual motivation, the schizophrenic impulse.   Explanation of terminology. With the exception of the production of poetry (whose arrival is frequently unbidden & unheralded), I had always simply taken it for granted that what I wrote & how I wrote it would be informed to a significant degree by the particular readership at which it was aimed.  Always there would have to be an ‘audience’ & therefore always there would have to be prior publication. But with the advent of blogging the conventional audience/publication interface by which the writer must prevail upon a professionally constituted third party to act as literary broker was eliminated. Where once the writer would consign the products of inspiration to a stack of A4 paper that would then have to be parcelled up & submitted to the godlike intermediary for ultimate judgement as to its appropriateness for release, now the writer was in total control.  The quotidian (or at least regular) nature of the blogging process means that the writer can oscillate between public statements intended for a broad readership, material that s/he knows will be favourably received by regular visitors, & posts that are, essentially, soliloquies, internal monologues or dialogues or private rants that, simply in the utterance, afford some sort of relief or expiation.     Hence the dual motivation, the schizophrenic impulse.  One day one will be impelled to get out the megaphone in order to educate, elucidate, implore or exhort all who stray within range. The next day one will slip into step with one’s blogger pals in the following up of a topic of mutual interest or the sharing of a meme. The day after one finds oneself standing alone on a street corner babbling incontinently about some personal obsession – steam railways, the Fall of the Hapsburgs or the best way to dress lobster thermidor. The trick, I guess, is to get the balance right. Too much megaphone has the public blocking its ears & talking to each other about the weather. Too much local gossiping or game-playing will ultimately have you hanging over the garden fence on your own. Too much information about the last days of steam haulage on the London, Midland & Scottish railway will have people leaving the building in droves via upper storey windows.   Hits will always bring a warm glow. It would surely take a monomaniac still to be posting fulsomely after a couple of weeks without a single comment. (Although there are those who turn comments off, satisfied presumably that out there the silent millions are hanging on their every word. Which strikes me as a bit odd, scary even). So it does smart a bit sometimes when one posts something rare & cherished & (‘tread softly because you tread on my dreams’) it carries a big fat zero all the way down to the bottom of the screen & into the archive. But with a half-decent blog it’s roundabouts & swings & the unconsidered trifle may well trail a crowd of comments, several from strangers.   What’s a blog for? The lot. Across the arching spectrum from formal dissertation to soul-searing confessional. The best blogs make journeys within that spectrum again & again & in so doing they create the conditions for that extraordinary intimacy of acquaintance that compels so many of us to maintain the process whilst simultaneously leading lives that are enriched by the normal synthesis of joys & frustrations beyond the screen & keyboard. Blogging offers a unique combination of options & outcomes &, whilst for me the ambition to publish remains firmly in place, I find the medium (with occasional pauses for breath) constantly inspiring & frequently fulfilling.   9:02:17 PM    Mmm? []

© Copyright 2005 Dick Jones. Last update: 01/07/2005; 23:32:58.