Ok, I’ve come to the conclusion that I do not blog the way most people blog. This is based upon my own reading of many other people’s blogs. Perhaps this is a good thing. There is a complete and utter lack of restraint in many people’s blogs that I find interesting (although sometimes I feel as though I need to shower after reading some of them <NWP>).
I had initially thought of blogs as sort of an electronic diary/journal and certainly for some people they are. But it seems to me that there is something more to them then that. In the blogging world there seems to be an acute awareness of the other. The phantom reader who you may never meet but know is there reading over your shoulder while you write.
Many people have taken to creating alternate personas on their blogs. A sort of well crafted, well thought out, courageous, say what I want kind of persona that cannot possibly exist in real life no matter how hard a person tries because we just don’t have the social patience to sit around for 20 minutes while someone mentally creates and perfects, ala blog-style, a response to our comment.
I remember a quote from the great Canadian writer Robertson Davies on the increasing popularity of word processing in writing (in the 80’s – yes, I am THAT old). He said that he felt word processors encouraged literary diarhea…I would tend to agree. I think that’s one of the reasons I like poetry so much…even free verse – because you are restricted to a particular form. It forces you to become creative. I REALLY like poetry from between 1800 to about 1900 for that reason. Structure and form were crafted to their utmost in terms of poetry. If you read Edgar Allan Poe’s poem The Bells you will know what I mean – this is arguably the most perfect poem written in terms of rhyme, metre and form…it is beautiful. I will post it after this. Read it out loud and read it quickly. I probably like the gospel of John best for the same reason – in terms of writing style it is one of the simplest in the New Testament – but in terms of beauty and impact – perhaps the best.
Anyhow – back to blogging. I try to be somewhat careful as to what I post here. I recognize that a broad spectrum of people read my blog and to me that builds a certain amount of accountability into my writing. A certain amount of restraint. Restaint and structure have been viewed as bad things for a number of decades in terms of self-expression but increasingly so as we move along in culture. To a certain degree this is true when restraint become repression and the inevitable outlet happens in some brutally unhealthy way. But a certain amount of structure and restraint can give birth to the most beautiful of creations. People should not feel as though they are somehow betraying themselves if they don’t expulse all over their blog about every gory detail of their lives.
Now I am not suggesting censorship by any means – people can write what they want, how they want and I can simply choose to not read it. What I am suggesting is that they can convey their meanings just as easily and perhaps more beautifully in a simpler form (and yes I do believe there is objective, absolute beauty but we’ll save that for another discussion).
Perhaps a blog written completely in that wonderful Japanese poetry style Haiku….hmmm…
(P.S. Yes – I am aware of the irony that I have just written one of my longer blog posts about the virtues of shorter, more structured posts…)
Harnessing Chaos 