Why Blog?
It’s been about a year and a half since I started this noble and diffuse enterprise of writing a weblog so… I decided to make a list, off the top of my head, about how I think about this weblog and why I write this weblog.
* I like to write. Using language is a way of connecting — language embeds wisdom, history, context — the relatedness of everything. “Each word is, at first, a stroke of genius”. You name things and describe feelings and wrestle with ideas — how could you not like writing down your thoughts and publishing it to the world? You say in a weblog, as in all creative acts: here, it is the best I could do, hope you enjoy it.
* I would do it anyway — it would just be in the form of a personal journal otherwise (which I keep, not that regularly, anyway).
* I felt that artists are co-opted by people who write about art. That is, without intention on the part of writers about art, just the effort to understand another person often results in a conflation of the interpreter and the subject. I wanted my own voice, on record, that could be compared to anyone else’s presentation. Let the audience decide how reliable the interpreter may be.
* I wanted to work out my feelings about art.
* I wanted to work out my feelings about life (same thing as art for me) — and writing is a way of thinking — I write to discover exactly what I think — not to rehearse the already parsed.
* It might be helpful in getting attention for my work.
* It is an overflowing, like any creative act.
* So many pixels; so little time.
* I conceive of the weblog as a place where friends sit around and talk…
* So the same courtesies, humor, variant and shifting subjects, contradictions and inevitable repetitions would hold that obtain in any long term, friendly relationship.
* I feel, politically, you have to speak up. This is a time, like the Vietnam era, where politics pushes its vein-popping face into yours — you cannot remain silent at jeopardy of being complicit.
* The times, they are interesting — and I mean that in the grimmest sense. ( I named the weblog Jolly Days out of that sardonic sense of our era.)
* Life is short, weblogs are long.
* Because it is there.
* I want to have my say.
* I never sit down without knowing the subject I am going to consider. This is the opposite of many who post to their weblog on a regular basis, no matter what. I realize sometimes you lose readers who expect daily posts after you have set up expectations and then post irregularly — but I want to come at it caring, rather than find the caring in the process — and sometimes nothing is that compelling; not that there aren’t always important subjects to consider — but feelings have their own life and you can get as wrapped in something trivial as something important — I like taking that emotional temperature.
* I decided not to be too personal, but to let personally suggestive material in; I don’t feel the weblog is personal revelation — it is discussion and speculation.
* It’s a way of taking notes.
* I wanted to see if I could do it: set it up, have it work, keep it going…if it would continue to interest me.
* I never think of the reader except as the Perfect Reader — that is, in the Mark Van Doren sense of someone who appreciates the nuance, the language, and stretches and shifts in the same directions as myself — so it is better not to think about how many of those people there are — the web logs for the site seem to indicate a goodly number…
* I like the idea of the unmediated expression. Painting is that way — although gatekeepers in the form of dealers, curators and writers might run interference, allowing only the current meme into view, in general, the visual arts can be done and viewed without intercession. Writers have a harder time — with editors, and others who want a piece of the ego pie. So weblogs allow an unmediated expression — a truly singular power offered by the internet and its vast audience (This is one reason collaborative entertainment forms like the movies will never be art as I understand it. Too many cooks; no sole ownership.)
