Tuesday, March 01, 2005
On becoming history
Confession: I often wake up thinking about my blog! It can really take hold when I'm in the shower. It's almost like blogthoughts have invaded the water system and enter my brain via the showerhead! But I rarely blog these thoughts, mostly I'm a late afternoon/early evening blogger when I'm settling on some of the notable (ie blogable/blogworthy thoughts and things of the day). It's all charmingly transient though, because the posts quickly become history and, let's face it, who spends time reading archives? Maybe some people do (maybe we should check that out) - I don't unless there's a link. Who wants history when today's news is breaking? So when a blog's sleeping (like Colin and Michele's did) there's some disappointment, and when it wakes it can be quite a pleasant surprise. That's the nowness and the newness of blogs. I like reading ones that regularly update.
Do I ever read archives? Well, not very much at all. Maybe when I stumble on a new one, maybe then - but usually there's enough on a page to get the measure of it/them. OK, so that's a bit of history, but it's not a thorough-going trawl through the archives. I have a kind of B-list of blogs - one's I keep an eye on from tme to time with a view to maybe linking to them in the future, but again that's very much the case of checking them out every so often. The other day I started thinking about that dead stuff buried in my archives and thought how good it could be to categorise or reference it (some bloggers do this sort of thing). The only trouble is that that starts to superimpose themes, whereas there's something organic - no don't like that word- chancy even exciting about overlapping ideas. For example, I had a sort of layering of footsteps/tracks/weather/space and place going on last week. Didn't get many comments, so it was probably total crap, but it was just interesting and real how the ideas became a sort of collage.
That overlapping and juxtaposition of ideas is a sort of creative process (not wishing to make grand claims for my humble blog). The archives then become like sketches, workings-out, think-pieces maybe informing something 'larger' or maybe just dying away. So, in the end, I think most of it really is just history, although I mustn't forget that I do sometimes put in reminders and references to check out later. Like this, today's thoughts - part of a developing tapestry of ideas or just some stuff waiting on this page to become history?
Do I ever read archives? Well, not very much at all. Maybe when I stumble on a new one, maybe then - but usually there's enough on a page to get the measure of it/them. OK, so that's a bit of history, but it's not a thorough-going trawl through the archives. I have a kind of B-list of blogs - one's I keep an eye on from tme to time with a view to maybe linking to them in the future, but again that's very much the case of checking them out every so often. The other day I started thinking about that dead stuff buried in my archives and thought how good it could be to categorise or reference it (some bloggers do this sort of thing). The only trouble is that that starts to superimpose themes, whereas there's something organic - no don't like that word- chancy even exciting about overlapping ideas. For example, I had a sort of layering of footsteps/tracks/weather/space and place going on last week. Didn't get many comments, so it was probably total crap, but it was just interesting and real how the ideas became a sort of collage.
That overlapping and juxtaposition of ideas is a sort of creative process (not wishing to make grand claims for my humble blog). The archives then become like sketches, workings-out, think-pieces maybe informing something 'larger' or maybe just dying away. So, in the end, I think most of it really is just history, although I mustn't forget that I do sometimes put in reminders and references to check out later. Like this, today's thoughts - part of a developing tapestry of ideas or just some stuff waiting on this page to become history?
# posted by blogger @ 12:58 AM 
