Morning Gazette--Obligatory blogger navel-gazing edition

I've been at this seven months now and I have yet to do a Why I Blog post.

A fact about which most of you are saying right now, "Thank God," while the rest of you are suddenly sitting bolt upright in chairs, your spines stiffening in horror at the possibility that that's just what I'm about to do, shove a Why I Blog post in your face.

Fret not!

I can't tell you why I blog because I've got no clue why.

This is the answer I gave to Shakespeare's Sister when she asked her readers how they got into the blogging biz.

No friends. No life. A late night, half a bottle of tequilla, and a sudden curiosity about whether or not it was possible to find naked pictures of Ann Coulter on the web. Suddenly, without warning, I was reading Josh Marshall and Atrios and Avedon Carol and saying to myself, "They made his son president???? How did that happen? That coke head? Impossible! Something must be done! I know! I'll bet the whole mess came about because nobody asked for my opinion. I'll fix that. Now nobody will have to ask!"

A long way 'round to admitting what I already said.  I got no clue.

But I came across this post at The Minor Fall, The Major Lift this morning.  TMFTML has been thinking, in between doses of Xanax and swigs of vodka and grapefruit juice.

I've been thinking lately about blogging; more specifically, what the fuck is it for? And, to start, I think we need to identify our terms. Every article you've seen in the news lately about bloggers refers specifically to a certain subset of bloggers: Let's call them polibloggers. These are the angry white guys who crapped their pants in fear when the Twin Towers came down and decided that the new climate of intolerance-masquerading-as-patriotism would allow them to give voice to the blatant racism and hatred of the lower classes that they were previously forced to keep in check due to societal norms and basic politeness. You know the type: They spend hours going over memos and are conversant in "font sizes," whatever the fuck those are. Why is it that these guys get all the attention, when much more interesting things are happening amongst the arts and media bloggers?

There are about 10 true things in that graph, many more in the whole post, but the key truth is that the regular, analog media, when it deigns to notice blogs, focuses on the polibloggers, whom the media mainly loathe, fear, and despise---except for Wonkette, who they hope and pray will add a web cam to her page real soon and won't they be surprised when they find themselves spying on Greg Beato brushing his teeth---and when they have to admit that there are other types of blogs doing business on the virtual main street, they dismiss them as lots of lonely people writing about their cats.

That's where the ubiquitous Friday cat-blogging joke comes from, a joke that really needs to be retired because the reference is long forgotten and it's turned into the thing it was meant to satirize, lots of people proudly showing off pictures of their cats and asking the rest of us to find them adorable.

I hate cats.

I'll understand if you now feel you have to stop reading my page on principle.

Although it will just confirm my opinion of cat lovers as self-deluded masochists.

Think your cats will give up anything offered to them free by people who hate you?

But back to blogging.

What TMFTML wrote about the media's obsession with the narrowest form of blogging, and the fact that what the media wants from even those bloggers is for them to go away, reminded me of a post by Chicago Tribune columnist and tireless blogger Eric Zorn from last month in which Eric caught a bunch of old guard media blowhards being forehead-slappingly wrong about blogs, one of them even comparing blogging to talking on CB radios and all of them dismissing blogging as a fad that must pass as soon as possible.

Eric, responding to the most dullwitted of the blowhards, Chicago Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg, riposited, and how long have I been waiting to use that five dollar synonym for replied:

Steinberg is, in fact, very much mistaken. His patronizing and clueless rhetoric (“a blogger -- someone who keeps an online diary… unvarnished and unedited”) notwithstanding, this format, this medium, is here to stay.

Some of the terminology may change and some of the genres may splinter off and form more distinct identities, but I’m absolutely sure that, 30 years from now:

• Every major media outlet (even the lumbering old Sun-Times) will have seamlessly incorporated the blog format into its offerings.
• Web logging will be so ubiquitous and diverse that we will no more try to count the number of blogs in existence than we would today try to count the number of “printed things” in the world.
• Steinberg will still be predicting that the fad will end any day now, and his sons will be mocking him for it in their blogs.

And Eric's post reminded me of this post by Terry Teachout, which Terry headlined "Memo From Cassandra."  Terry is one of the web's great blog boosters, often out-cheerleading even the likes of Jeff Jarvis.  Terry has been to the mountain top and seen a land flowing with milk and honey but no ink, anywhere.

Terry cheerfully looks forward to the day when the written word, in all genres and disciplines, is delivered and consumed digitally.  No more pencils, no more books, and possibly all teachers' dirty looks visible via webcams.

I think he's more right than wrong, although I think books are here to stay for a lot longer than Terry does, because reading is still fundamentally a sensual experience.  People like the feel of books in their hands when they read.  They enjoy touching the paper to turn the pages.  These are among our earliest sense memories and we would hate to give them up, we'd miss them, and the only way around that is to make sure that a generation or two grow up without them, which means taking the picture books out of the hands of little children.  Never going to happen, my friend.

But Terry is right about other things, including the need for artists to create and maintain their own blogs, not just for the crassest form of self-promotion, but because, as Terry argues, in the not to distant future, that will be the best way for artists to develop and reach audiences:

I’ve said this before, but it can’t be said often enough: the mainstream media aren’t especially interested in serious art, and such interest as they do have is diminishing daily. If you’re looking to big-city newspapers to start reviewing more literary fiction, or to PBS to telecast more ballet and modern dance, or to your local radio station to continue carrying the Metropolitan Opera’s Saturday broadcasts, you’re kidding yourself. They don’t care. Which leaves you with two options. You can sit around complaining about their indifference—or you can do an end run around them and use the new media to reach out directly to your audience, both existing and potential.

And Terry's post reminded me that among my regular and semi-regular readers I count at least three artists with web sites and blogs.  Four, if you include The Heretik.  Joe's a poet and he posts many of his own poems on his page, but I don't think he thinks of The Heretik as a poetry blog.  The other three are Doug Truth, who's a painter---that's one of Doug's paintings, Firehouse, at the top of the page--- Matthew Hutchinson, a classical guitarist, and Enchanting Juno, a knitter.

Juno might be more comfortable describing what she does as a craft and herself as a craftswoman, but all the examples of her knit work she's posted look like art to me.

And of course many of you are writers, like Jaquandor, who is writing a novel, and Trish Wilson, who just had two more stories accepted for publication, way to go, Trish!  Tom Watson's wife, Beryl Watson, is a painter, but I don't know if she reads my page.  I don't know if she even reads Tom's page.  Wives are unpredictable that way.  That's one of her paintings there on your right.   Beryl doesn't have her own web page yet, but Tom promises to get to work on fixing that.

And I know many others of you are musicians and artists of all different kinds.  But I don't think of your blogs as being the kind that Terry has in mind.  If I'm wrong, or if I've missed important links to your work on your pages, please let me know.

But it's this post by Juno that Terry's post also reminded me of, and it brings this post of mine back to its starting point.  Juno's entry is headlined "Why?"  As in why blog and why read blogs?  Questions Juno sees as two versions of the same question.  Read her whole answer, but the key for her is one word---people.

People outraged, people falling love, people enjoying, venting, mastering skills, remodeling kitchens, reading, learning, changing, marriages beginning and ending, children being born or, so tragically, lost.  People discovering their lives, and themselves, risking themselves by exposing something to a stranger and gaining something in the process - knowledge, perspective, agreement, discussion, a greater sense of self.

So you can relax.  This hasn't been a Why I Blog post at all.  It's been more of a Why They Blog post.

It can be turned into a Why You Blog post or a Why You Read Blogs post or a Here Are Some of My Favorite Blogs post.  Just put it in the comments or post on your blog---or somebody else's blog.  Put it in the comments section at Instapundit, what the heck.  Confuse the devil out of him.---and send me the link.

(Related reading:   I couldn't work this into my scheme here, but this post by Chris Nolan at Politcs from Left to Right, on the old where are all the women bloggers meme, makes some excellent points, not just about the women blogger question but also about the analog media's bloggerphobia.)

Comments

[Linkmeister]

A couple of months ago in Doonesbury Mike was interviewing Jimmy Thudpucker and they were talking about the future of the music biz. Thudpucker was quite positive that downloads would free artists from the tyranny of the labels, which seems to be a similar thought to Teachout's. Broader distribution, fewer costs (moral and financial), etc.

If books go away, where does my 2,500-volume collection go?

[denisdekat]

I blog cause I feel better after doing it, also, I like reading blogs as they have much more to offer than main stream media...

Your blog is high quality, enjoy that!

[sfmike]

You hate cats? Now, that took some courage to admit. I also like, "I know! I'll bet the whole [Bush presidency] mess came about because nobody asked for my opinion. I'll fix that. Now nobody will have to ask!" I'm sure it really WAS all your fault so I'm glad you are now preventing evil with your incisive opinions.

And yes, printed material will always be around "because reading is still fundamentally a sensual experience." Makes me realize I need to get back to a piss-stained first-edition I got out of the San Francisco Public Library of "Bad Boy of Music," a 1945 autobiography of the American classical composer George Antheil. Though I'm only a quarter of the way through, it's funny, smart and HIGHLY recommended.

[grishaxxx]

Formal reply at my place.
But, you devil, you tempt and tempt and tempt! Cat-Blogging - well, was that a - ahem - euphemism? Is that why Fafblog blogged Pie? And what about TBogg's Basset Blogging? Who will document these manners and mores?
----
And while I'm at it, the new *C&TCF* is a Tim Burton joint, so the Depp/MTM thing shouldn't surprise, Esp after *Ed Scissorhands* - and, not having read it, what did Willy look like in the book? I thought Wilder was brilliant in the first movie, but otherwise I think it's ugly and cheesy-looking - flat and garish. God, I hope this re-make is better, but some of the stuff I saw in the trailer gives me pause. Clockwork Orange meets the Candyman. O well...

[The Heretik]

Thanks for the kind words, Lance. I blog, therefore I am. Whatever I just blogged. Worse ways to live. I find the world in people who come my way. A sweet life is filled by an open heart.

And poetry? Poetry is where you find it.

[Lance]

SF Mike, you know what I hate most about cats?

They like me.

Won't leave me alone.

Because they know I don't like them. That's why they're evil. They're torturers.

Sometime I'll tell you how it's also my fault that Ronald Reagan was elected.

Grishax,

You didn't include the link.

http://ratboyxx.blogspot.com/2005/04/26-april-2005.html

There it is, folks. A good answer.

Denis, thanks.

Link, maybe we can open a museum. Your 2500 books and my 3000.

That was depressing just to type. No wonder my wife won't let me buy any new books.

[grishaxxx]

Lance - we are still trying to figure out all the intricacies of this cross/back-linking thingy. Please don't be too harsh, just yet. You're the vet here!

And cats like your company - well, just shows how perverse they can be.

[Trish Wilson]

I had no idea you hated cats. I'll have to post extra pix on Friday Cat Blogging day just for you. ;)

Thanks for the congrats on my two short stories. I've also recently been published in Alternet, and I was interviewed by New York Times Magazine a few days ago. I know the NY Times Magazine article probably won't be to my liking, but I'm glad I got my voice out there.