Category: Weblogging

Categories
Weblogging

I thought I was the center of the Universe

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Returning to Halley Suitt’s writing, Delacour Rapprochement, she responds to Jonathon Delacour’s and Stavros’ statement about being “half a planet away from the action” with:

One of the things he mentions is how he and Stavros The WonderChicken live far away from some of us bloggers who hang out in Boston, SF, NY. I was very interested in that, just thinking about it the other day, not in terms of living near bloggers, but rather, thinking about how few people you see in any given day and our lives are lived – even in this jet-set world – in very local ways. If your local neighborhood includes Harvard University or Times Square or The Golden Gate Bridge, you do have a different “local” experience over a lifetime which some may call elite, but this is where we live. I don’t know if I want to apologize for it, but as I mentioned in my post “The Star You Are” it’s disingenuous to pretend it’s not part of the game here.

It is funny, but when I read both of the gentlemen’s use of this term, I read it as their being half way around the planet from the United States, not specifically Boston or New York or San Francisco. Within the given context of BloggerCon, this is Boston-based primarily because Dave Winer hosts the event there, not specifically because it was a a global center for weblogging.

I have lived in both Boston and San Francisco, and they are interesting communities, with lively histories and culture. They are both known for their universities, as well as being technical centers. However, considering that all webloggers aren’t academic, nor are they technical, I’m not sure where the implicit understanding of these two locations being focal points comes from, other than both locations have been the center of technical conferences.

(I do understand where the New York reference came from – New York and New Yorkers have always considered themselves the center of the known universe.)

I’ve known Stavros for close to three years, *Mr. Delacour for over two, and Ms. Suitt just over a year. Among the people they know or have known are folks who live in Wisconsin, Tacoma, Tennessee, Chicago, Georgia, Japan, Canada, various places in upstate New York, the UK, and yes, in Boston and San Francisco–but not to the exclusion of any other location. So I am puzzled by Ms. Suitts assertion that Harvard University, Times Square, and the Golden Gate Bridge provide some form of elite background.

I worked at Harvard Business School, and it was an interesting place. It’s a very pretty campus, and famous, but so is Indiana University, Washington University here in Missouri, Perdue, Yale, and, well, I could go on. Times Square is cool. I always try to visit Times Square when I visit New York. It’s a wild place, primarily because you’ll never know what or who you’ll meet there. But elite? Not unless you want to count the guy trying to sell fake diamond watches on the street.

Then there is the beautiful Golden Gate Bridge. It is a treasure, and still one of my favorite places. What’s remarkable about it is how accessible it is. No matter what time of day or the weather, you can always find a quiet spot on the beach by the Bridge.

I am belaboring a point at Ms. Suitt’s expense and for that I apologize to her. She is only reflecting what is an unspoken assumption among American bloggers, which is these locations are the places to be. There’s always a conference, or symposia, or some blogger get together that features at least one, possibly more A-List bloggers. Even those of us within the US can feel half a planet away from the action sometimes.

But it’s really only an illusion, smoke and mirrors.

Ms. Suitt also wrote:

I want be a writer when I grow up. It’s not easy to make a living being a writer. It’s easier to get paid to write if people know who the hell you are. I do want people to know who the hell I am, because I want them to read what I write. I want to be paid for what I write.

If Stavros or Mr. Delacour were to visit from South Korea or Australia, I would first give them both **huge hugs and big, wet kisses–on the cheek, I hasten to add, lest some think I’m propositioning them here, in my weblog. I would show them my home and places I love, and wine them and dine them and delight in finally meeting them. I would ask who they would want to see and I’d load them tenderly into Golden Girl and take them anywhere they want to go. We could go to Washington, or even North to BC. How about close to home and Chicago? Texas? No problem. Georgia? You got it. Boston? It would be my honor.

But even if, as is likely, we never meet, nothing would change. My interest in them wouldn’t suddenly fade away, because it is their writing that attracted me to their spaces and it is still their writing that brings me back. Them boys, they be damn fine writers. And so is Ms. Suitt.

The only geography important to writing is your head. Writing isn’t who you know or where you live, it’s what you put on the page. You can’t write when you’re at a party, or a blogger dinner, or conference; all the parties and dinners and conferences in the world aren’t going to make you a better writer.

As for fame, there’s no guarantee that even the best writing in the world will make you rich and famous; being included within a weblog won’t make that writing somehow more lucrative. A few people have received professional gigs, writing and otherwise, because of their weblogs and their popularity and who they know. They will always be the very rare exception. Folks saying otherwise, and I’m not including Ms. Suitt in this, are doing everyone a disservice by implying that weblog popularity provides some form of shortcut to glory and fame.

Ms. Suitt seems to agree with this:

I came to blogging as a writer. Did I come to blogging to become a famous writer? No, I think I came to blogging just to write.

Walk down the street right now, no matter where you are. Ask the first person you meet who Glenn Reynolds or Dave Winer are. Then ask them who Janet Jackson is. Every time you confuse weblogging with fame and fortune, repeat this exercise, but replace Janet Jackson because fame is fleeting.


*I’m trying out Joseph Duemer’s use of formal last names rather than the more familiar first names when discussing ideas rather than people. There has been discussion that the use of first names can personalize conversations, which can lead to misunderstandings. In addition, use of first names may make new readers feel more excluded from the discussion.

**Well, there goes my attempt to withhold undue familiarity.

Categories
Weblogging Writing

Sleepless in St. Louis

If you were up in the wee hours of a St. Louis night, last night, you would have noticed me publish and then pull a couple of posts, which I then re-published this morning. Last night was another difficult, sleepless night for me, and sometimes I write things I’m not sure I want to publish: the first because it does reflect on friends of mine (and concerns that I’m breaking a confidence); the second because sometimes in the wee hours of the morning, I am a moral coward.

However, I’ve been assured that no confidences have been broken in regards to the first, and as for the second, in the morning I am always a tigress, hear me roar. I may be inspired by the night, but I’m emboldened by the morning.

My sleepless nights are due in some part to attempting to live life as a writer, as Halley Suitt puts it. Though I want to make further comment on her geographical ruminations in a later post, for now I can agree with Ms. Suitt when she writes, It’s not easy to make a living being a writer. Even being known, especially being known primarily in weblogging circles, is no guarantee of success when it comes to selling books or articles.

(Especially not when you write a book on something like RDF and most of your readers aren’t technical, aren’t interested in RDF, or both, as sales seem to indicate. I should either write about sex, dieting, or having sex while you are dieting.)

Unless you’re JK Rowley or Stephen King, most fulltime writers live in a permanent state of hunger; spending an amazing amount of time thinking of new article and book ideas, looking for new publication sources, and searching for other sources of income in between those times when actually working on one’s current book (three chapters of which will earn the next installment in the advance and thus one can pay for one’s car, not to mention that the kitty cat needs to have her teeth cleaned).

Categories
Burningbird Weblogging

Face to face with the elusive giant squid tree in Missouri

I am compressing my remaining two Emily Dickinson posts into one, which I hope to put online sometime in the next day. I found the same topic reflected in the subjects of both essays, and am editing accordingly. Besides, my hands are bloody enough from beating at the box.

After the essay, I am going to turn my focus to moving this weblog to a different weblogging tool, taking down several sub-sites—I am letting several domains expire—and coming up with a new look for the weblog. And I’m going to go outside more. Much more.

Speaking of the outdoors, I spent several hours yesterday walking through the streets of St. Charles, enjoying unusually warm weather and just being out of the house. This Spring promises to be lovely, and I plan on hitting all the hikes I can’t walk in the summer because of the critters. I do not plan on providing an easy lunch for the native Missouri insect life this year. The little bastards are going to have to work for their food, and come find me.

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Speaking of being bugged, Doc agrees with Jeff Jarvis on Stern, and Jarvis agrees with Doc back, and the reverberation damn near took out my cognitive processes. However, I managed to hold on to my thinking center, but it was a close call. Very close.

Still, I feel bad for Jarvis, as he has attracted a remarkably hostile readership, including several people from what I call the “spit while you pray” club. Kind of reminds me of, well, Howard Stern.

That’s the problem if you keep your mind too open, Mr. Jarvis: all sorts of evil shit can crawl in.

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I did like what Jarvis wrote on litmus tests for group membership. It’s a small post, and all one paragraph, so I’m going to just copy the whole thing (there’s loads of comments to read, still):

I supported the war and people called me a right-winger and refused to accept my liberal credentials. Now I go after the Bush administration over free speech and Howard Stern and also don’t like Gibson’s Passion and the right-wingers call me a left-winger. Those who hated me one week love me the next; those who loved me one week hate me the next; and a few smart people sit back and laugh. Life becomes very confusing when you have only one litmus test by which to judge mankind.

If the current political environment is good for one thing, it’s the fact that it’s forcing us to re-evaluate our membership in whatever groups we used to classify ourselves in.

There was a barrage of comments from the person mentioned in the last post over the weekend against me over at Joi Ito’s (don’t bother looking, Joi followed his comment policy and deleted them because they were out of context attacks on someone other than himself). I guess one reader who didn’t know me felt compelled to come over to my site, read a few posts and then join in the bashing; dismissing my unoriginal writing, as that of a typical liberal because of my anti-Bush and anti-Ashcroft writings. This isn’t surprising, but he also lumped in my Nader essay, my strong pro-gay marriage stance, and my Emily Dickinson essay to support his view.

Now, I can see the anti-Bush and anti-Ashcroft posts; liberals in this country share this view without hesitation. However, liberals are mixed on Nader, the same as they are on pro-gay marriage. I have found several people who consider themselves very liberal who have very ambivalent feelings about gay marriage. Support for civil unions, yes; but not necessarily support for gay marriage.

(And we only have to look at the upside down, turned in and out world of poor Andrew Sullivan to realize that even the poster children for the conservative movement in this country aren’t happy about the Marriage Amendment. )

As for writing about Emily Dickinson and being liberal, I guess this means then conservatives either don’t write about Emily Dickinson, or don’t write about poetry. Maybe they have other tastes, such as listening to Howard Stern.

The point is, the rules of the game have changed; the bit buckets have been kicked over. We’re all free to think whatever we want and to call ourselves whatever we want.

Now, don’t let all that freedom scare you.

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Speaking of being free to speak for herself, Jeneane wrote about her discomfort with the gay right to marry being equated with the civil rights actions of people like Rosa Parks:

Let me state, for the record if you will, that I feel happiness for the gay couples who have been committing themselves for the long haul in San Francisco. I’m still fuzzy on what these new unions should be called. I am also sympathetic to the desire of gay couples to win legal rights as one another’s spouses.

I am not happy, however, with the privileges desired by rich, white, Rosie O’Donnell, for example, – who can afford to hop a jet out to San Fran as easily as she can walk into the nearest fancy restaurant and dine as she wishes – being equated with the fight for human rights carried forth by the likes of Rosa Parks, whom Shelley mentions, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

To compare the desire among gays to marry with the “bound-and-shackled, ripped-from-their-country-to-toil-in-servitude, whipped-lynched-raped-WITHOUT-any-protection-under-the-law” experience of those who fought and died as a direct result of the legacy of slavery during the civil rights era, is wrong.

Jeneane and I will never reach consensus on this issue, and will have to agree to disagree. But we do so with respect for each other’s viewpoints and without acrimony; that’s something else we should get used to—we’re not going to find our soul mates online, but disagreement mixed with respect can be a beautiful experience, voices harmonized rather than discordant or echoing.

From what I can read of his comments at Jeff Jarvis, that person in Joi’s comments who dismissed me so quickly as a liberal because I wrote about Emily Dickinson will never understand this.

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Even after walking around St. Charles yesterday it was too nice to go home so headed to the Busch Conservation Area for late day exploration of the wet lands. No, that’s Busch Conservation, not Bush Conservative, though come to think of it, they’re both all wet.

I hadn’t been out to Busch since this summer, and the difference between then and now is drastic enough to make me feel like I was exploring a whole new place. Leaveless trees and brown grasses under grayed/blue sky with waters filled with geese provides a nice change from lush green and blue waters filled with turtle and egrets.

In the light, all the secret spaces are revealed and the monster in the shadows turns out to be nothing more than half-bitten myth and fancy.

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Categories
Weblogging Writing

Listening to you

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I’m not sure what happened. I was writing about a personal revelation I had and then somehow the writing became filtered and morphed until some people see echo chambers and other people – too many other people – see it as an attack against an established (pick one: elitist/egalitarian) person/group.

At first I thought the original problem was the example I used, but no, from many of the comments left with my writing, I could see that people were understanding what I said. But then somewhere along the way, the tone changed and each person came along and picked out the pertinent bits and tossed the rest away.

(Tell me, if you’re served a stew at a friends house, would you dig out the beef and toss the potatoes on the floor?)

I thought, well maybe it’s my writing. Maybe my writing really isn’t that great, or I am not making my points effectively. Where before I was talking about a personal revelation– that whole writer/community member thing– perhaps people were reading attack. I made an error in my writing by somehow putting to much focus on the incident rather than my own personal ruminations.

But then there was this little tidbit, left by Dave Rogers:

Now, an interesting question would be to wonder if Don Park would have offered his comment, which he subsequently withdrew because he felt it would distract from another message he wished to convey, if he hadn’t perceived that Marc had pulled the invitation? And, if he had not, would Shelley have offered this essay?

As to the first question, my guess is probably not. As to the second, my guess is Shelley probably would have addressed the issues in this essay at a later time in response to a different event, similar in kind to this one.

Bang on, Dave. The incident was nothing more than an impetus to write something on my mind. What I didn’t realize at the time, though, was the absolute and complete damaging effect mentioning certain names would have on the preception of what I wrote.

This has left me frustrated, not because I care that much whether people or agree with me or not; but because I’m left feeling that people didn’t even bother to read what I had to say. They saw “Danah”, “Joi”, “Cory”, and “Marc” and that was the end of the story for them.

Now this morning, somehow what I wrote about has become mutated even further to not only an attack on Joi Ito and his group, but conferences as well. This has not pleased me. No siree, not pleased me at all.

It was in a bitchy frame of mind that I wondered over to Dave Rogers weblog this morning to read what Dave had to say. I found:

I’ve been sort of participating in a discussion over at Shelley’s Burningbird Weblog and Grill about community, one of my favorite topics. I say “sort of” participating, because mostly the things I write just seem to vanish into the ether. I did get a nice comment from Stavros the Wonder Chicken, and Shelley even quoted large sections of my comments. But nobody ever bothers to stop and tell me I’m full of shit, which would at least suggest somebody read what I wrote.

Anyway, it doesn’t really matter.

But it does matter, Dave. Especially when you gave me a pretty good idea of why I got hit by a 2 x 4 last night:

Anyway, I’m starting to get all pedantic again. Most of the discussions about “echo chambers” and “group-think” and “community” are carried on within a very narrow set of beliefs which have been cherry-picked to make us feel as good about ourselves as possible, even if they don’t adequately describe the phenomenon they’re trying to address. As long as we can feel “good,” whether that’s advocating for “emergent democracy” or “smart mobs;” or railing against sexism, elitism, or whatever other “-ism” that has provoked a response, then we’re not going to be inclined to look much further into our own behavior, our own beliefs, our own reasoning. It is superfluous to the goal of maintaining an interior state of homeostasis – usually a feeling which can be described as “good” if only by noting its absence as in “I don’t feel comfortable with…” Or, “I’m offended by…” Which is ultimately why we do the things we do: Because it feels “good.” For the most part it works. But at the edges, it doesn’t, and more and more we’re finding ourselves living at the edge. And woe be unto he or she who challenges what makes us feel “good.” They will be made to feel “bad!”

Jeneane wrote a post this morning on this whole thing, but one sentence stood out because it was all in caps:

DO YOU HEAR ME?

Fuckin’ A, I do. Especially since that was the phrase echoing through my own mind as I tried to work through my frustrations today without a) deleting every last page of this weblog; or b) declaring war on Joi Ito, purely as a desperate declaration of independence; not because I have anything against Joi, but because I’ve been slapped with a brush and painted as such.

Excuse me, but you always write ‘red’.

I do not always write, ‘red’.

Yes you do. You’re dripping with ‘red’.

But that’s not me, that’s how I’m painted. I was painted ‘red’.

You’re just making excuses.

No! No! I’m actually more ‘blue’ than ‘red’.

Sure.

No! Really!

Then why are you dripping ‘red’?

I forgot to duck.

This whole thing reminded me so much of that song from the rock opera, Tommy. Remember the one? Sure you do:

See me.
Feel me.
Touch me.
Heal me.

Listening to you,
I get the music.
Gazing at you,
I get the heat.
Following you,
I climb the mountains.
I get excitement at your feet.

Right behind you,
I see the millions.
On you,
I see the glory.

From you,
I get opinions.
From you,
I get the story.

(Lovely version of Listening to you from Michael Cerveris web site)

Looking at these words one way, you see a lone figure demanding to be seen, to be heard.. But, looked at another way, you see a crowd, about to run over and crush the object of their affection. I love the conflict behind this song.

Listening to you, I hear the music.
Gazing at you, I get the heat.

Following you, I climb the mountains.
I get excitement at your feet.

Right behind you,
I see the millions.

          On you,
I see the glory.

From you,
I get opinions.

From you,
I get the story.

The mistake I made was not in my writing, or using certain peoples’ names or a specific incident as an example; it was to give into the sucking vortex that happened afterwards. People will read what they want to read and if they want to read ugliness into the words, that’s their head, that’s their problem. But once I snapped at the bait, then it became my problem.

It started with being a writer or being a community member, and it returns to wence it came. Or as BlogJazz wrote:

I get to do that here. Without benefit or restriction of audience. There are power-elites in every plane I move. I can’t be touched. I don’t register on their radar. While their gravity influences me, I am fully-powered and able to make my own path. I can’t be cast off since I wandered away long ago.

I’m not joining any battle, or any war, or even paying attention to any more of the bullshit. The reason for this post is to point out the words that Dave wrote and that Jeneane wrote and that BlogJazz wrote, and suggest that you go read them.

See them.

Hear them.

(…and did someone volunteer to have me re-design their weblog?)

Update

And geez, I almost forgot the Wonder chicken. You know if you don’t go see and hear him, he molts all over the server. It’s a mess.

Categories
Weblogging

One last post

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

On being a writer as compared to being a community member.

Elizabeth Lane Lawley wrote tonight:

Shelley wrote “If community causes you to alter your writing—not to say something you think should be said, or to write a certain way to get attention—then you are betraying yourself as a writer.” And in a comment to one of Shelley’s posts, stavrosthewonderchicken wrote “It’s not about community any more, if it ever was, for some of the more visible amongst us, I don’t think. Unless by community they are referring to the intersection of their legions of acolytes and their semi-closed network of peers – the same people that they hang out with at these silly conferences that people talk so much about.”

That just makes me angry. How dare either one of these people pass judgment on the sense of community or friendship that’s developed among the people they’re criticizing? I have watched Joi reach out and befriend so many people—very few of them among the digerati that seem to irk Shelley and her readers so. But they don’t bother to look closely enough to see any of that. They paint anyone who counts themselves part of this growing community of people with an interest in the sociology and technology underlying new technologies with the same brush. And in the process, they diminish all of our voices. I fully expect that I’ll be dismissed by them as simply another acolyte—and that the irony of that dismissal will be completely incomprehensible to them.

How dare I write something like, “If community causes you to alter your writing—not to say something you think should be said, or to write a certain way to get attention—then you are betraying yourself as a writer”?

Easily. By being a writer, and not worrying about members of the community making remarks such as this.

She also wrote:

Not interested in the research and projects presented at conferences like ETech, or AoIR, or Media Ecology? Fine. Every academic and professional field has people who find it a waste of time or an orgy of navel-gazing. But the level of venom and animosity being directed at people who I’ve seen to be welcoming and encouraging to so many newcomers, and whose circles are so clearly inclusionary, indicates to me that this isn’t disinterest. It’s resentment. It’s entitlement. It’s a reverse form of exclusion—if you’re part of “them” you’re not part of “us,” and we’re the only ones who really understand the medium.

Venom and animosity. Huh.

Liz thinks I’ll just dismiss her. She said, I fully expect that I�ll be dismissed by them as simply another acolyte�and that the irony of that dismissal will be completely incomprehensible to them.

She does me a disservice, both in this assumption and in the accusation of writing about this issue with ‘venom and animosity’. But this will be the last time that I suffer her accusations.

I am gratefully reminded of the truth of my own words, and they will serve as my response:

The best damn thing that can happen to many of us is being cut adrift by our communities.