On a recent expedition to the Helen Lempriere Sculpture Exhibition at Werribee, Thieu and I played a little game of predictive artspeak. How much easier our task would have been had we known about this handy little app that takes the guess work out of crapping on.
MA / blogs / autobiography Blogs and Autobiography
I printed out this article about the dynamics of autobiography (found via ::: wood s lot ::: ) some weeks ago. I picked it up again last night and started to wonder about autobiography in relation to blogs. A number of blogs this week have discussed what is oftennot blogged, especially in academic or politically oriented blogs- the personal, the emotional, the uncertain. So they write something else, something appropriate for a impersonal blog, but when they re-read these posts they think "oh yes, that was when I was fighting with a friend" or "that was what I wrote when I was thinking about leaving my job." It becomes a kind of coded message that only the blogger (and perhaps people close to the blogger) will be able to understand.
Lusebrink talks about
... the omnipresence in all cultures of, on the one hand, the desire to talk about oneself, to tell the story of one's life to other people in a moe or less fragmentary or chronological way... and, on the other hand, the late emergence and relative historical rarity of the genre of the autobiography itself, which appears to be intimately linked with the materiality of writing and the transformation of the public space in the 18th century
He compares written autobiography with the process of oral narration:
...during which the narrator, as a general rule, sees himself being constantly interrupted, challenged and critized by the interlocuter to whom he is recounting his life.
So does the blog follow the model of oral narration? (**note for me: Jill wrote on oral traditions recently. look up.) Blogs often have the casualness of a conversation, and encourage other voices to engage with the main thread through the introduction of comments. And they have an element of the transitory- I doubt whether many people bother to print or archive their blog entries past the default processes set in place by the software, which means eventually most of these blog conversations will be lost.
Yet the blog is all about writing, too. And I think it often appeals to people who prefer to write rather than talk, who find this medium a more comfortable way of distilling their thoughts.
Lusebrink says that the oral autobiographical narrative is
often fragmentary but always dialogical and interactive, answering the interlocutor's expectations and questionings.
This could quite clearly be describing the blog format and makes me think that the blog is more like oral autobiography than written autobiography where the reader
is condemned to passivity, devoid of any possibility of intervening in the narrative.
MA / blogs / webcams Webcams and Blogs Does anyone know of a blog that has a webcam? Or do you know of anyone in Melbourne who is a "cam girl?" (or "cam boy" for that matter...). The ABC's Dimensions program is doing some research for a show possibly on webcams and blogs. I said that I don't know of any blogs that have webcams- I know Megnut and Kottke used to, but I don't think they do anymore. And I don't know of anyone locally who does. Let me know if you do know anyone and I'll pass the information on.
Jill's post last week on hiding behind a blog has led to a cross-blog discussion about what is said and what isn't said in this format. OnePotMeal discusses what makes a weblog literary or not- is it the content or how we read the content? Jonathon Delacour has some interesting things to say in Alibis and consistent lies, including this:
That's it. Where my own interests lie. In other words, hardly anything to do with telling the literal truth; and everything to do with fashioning an authentic persona from bits of alibis and consistent lies.
When I started writing a blog early last year I decided to slip in the occasional "lie" or piece of fiction, just to experiment with the format of the first person narrative "confession". I still do occasionally- I might write a piece about someone I've passed on the street who is really just a character I've made up. Or I might exaggerate it or combine a couple or events into the one incident. These pieces tend to be written in a slightly different style or voice, I suppose, so I don't even really see it as lying to my blog, more that I'm doing a writing exercise that just happens to appear in this context.
Last night I remembered a quote that a friend gave to me from a play by Michael Gurr called Desirelines:
In buildings and parks, but particularly in parks, there are paths that the designers have decided are the best way to move people around. But there are also other paths- the brown, trodden-down ones that people actually use. They have a name, these trodden-down paths. They're called desirelines. They're the way people want to go, not the way they have been told to. The thing about the desireline is that it's usually the shortest path between to points. Between the beach and the carpark. The swing and the slide. Between judgement and understanding. People are very clever, they're very good at finding the desireline when they want to. But only when they want to.
I thought of this quote because I've been building a nav for a website and consequently have been spending a lot of time thinking about how people might use the site, how they might go about finding the information they want. Desirelines definitely exist on the web- this is the reason why the deep-linking debate is so futile. People want to go straight to the information they require, they don't want to be told to go through the gate-keepers house and follow the path around to the right. When people carve out these desirelines, the designer (be they landscape or web) wrings their hands and say "but look at how beautiful the path I've made for you is. I've designed it to please your senses and delight you along the way. If you don't go the way I've laid out you will miss things, maybe important things." But unfortunately for us designers, this is generally not what people want and if you don't provide it, they will cut through the beautifully laid out rose garden and trample down the fernery in their quest for the most expedient way of reaching their destination. What is a bookmark if not a desireline, after all?
blog probs Hmmm. My commenting feature seems to be missing and my archives are gone. And when I tried this morning to add some blogs to my list, the template kept reverting to an earlier version. Not good.
Is It A Book? discusses and gives examples of nonlinear books or narratives in both ancient and modern literature.
You may wonder what the transmission of ideas and language and writing development has to do with the nonlinear book or text. The answer is: everything. Visual communication began in forms that were not as linear as the modern book form with which we are most familiar. Writing was not originally a linear exercise. Most European languages are written left-to right and top-to-bottom, but other variations exist.
So The Brownie and I did a little survey last week on the ritual of singing "Happy Birthday." It turns out that a large number of people, when called upon to sing this song as part of a group will mime the words rather than actually participate. I must say that it's never actually occurred to me to mime and I was a little shocked to find out that so many people do.
But it's not even as straight forward as this. The more people I asked, the more variations on singing/not singing I discovered. One person admitted to starting off with a nice strong "HAP" and then, feeling that his job was done, trickling off to nothingness soon after. Luckily, someone else told me that they only mime at the start of the singing and then join in half way through, gaining momentum towards the end.
Interestingly, it seems that everyone is happy to participate in the "hoorays" ("I'm a team-player, of course I do the hoorays" one person said indignantly) but no one admitted to initiating the "Hip-hips." A friend of The Brownie had an interesting theory on this: In any group situation it is the person with the most seniority or relevance to the Birthday person who does the Hip-hips. Thus in the workplace if the CEO is in the room they will be the one to Hip Hips. If they are not there, then it moves down the line to the next most important person. In a domestic situation it is either a parent or a partner who takes on this duty.
Doing what? Keeping a blog? Well, maybe sometimes. But I don't do it as much as some people. It's not everyday.
I was thinking about what Sensei said to you the other day about the pace of these chat sessions we have- how the conversation"pings" back and forth between us.
It's kind of like a frantic game of table tennis sometimes.
Yes, I've thought that too. But blogs are like that- small bites of information delivered at speed. Links with a brief commentary, isn't that what it's all about?
Well, they're not all like that. Some people write quite lengthy pieces, like Doug, and some people rarely have any links, like Miss Jen Jen.
I guess my writing habits are shaped by the circumstances in which I write. It's generally done before work or at lunchtime, sitting at my desk in an open-plan office.
I'm conscious of having limited time and also aware of people walking behind me all the time.
Maybe you should vary when and where you write. And maybe try adding some breathing spaces- some windows to let in some air.
I drew a picture of some figs on a window ledge the other day. Should I put that in?
