Tuesday, July 27, 2010

To Quote a Friend: "A Blog, About Blogs"

Okay, okay. I know I just now posted, but whilst doing so a thought came into my head that I don't feel like saving to share later. It's small, coarse and perhaps endearing enough to be suspicious, but that's everything a blog post should be, right? Which brings me right into the matter at hand.
Blogs are such an interesting format for people to be channeling their thoughts into. Blogs are seemingly uncommon and-of-the-way enough that when we write in them we are confident that readers and friends won't venture from the downtown of facebook and texting far enough to reach the suburbs where our blogs reside and so we take on a certain amount of intimacy and sincerity with our reader (which we are sure will never come), that we lack in our status updates and photo comments.
Yet we have not wholly forgotten that we are on the internet for heavens sake, we do not go so far as to cross the threshold into diary land (at least not most of us) and it is this which makes blogs so wonderfully different from so many other writing outlets. The idea that someone might, that someone conceivably could search out or stumble across our stash of harvested thoughts, it is this which gives us the feeling of obligation to keep our posts coherent, somewhat relevant and organized. It is also this possibility that keeps us posting and attempting to keep our posts fresh, interesting, and intelligent. It's exciting to wonder who our ghost audience might be and to try and prompt them into giving comments and starting discussion.
Yep, blogs sure are crazy. I think what it comes down to is that we humans like to be peeked in on. We actually kind of want people to see us somewhat exposed, and for many people, their blog is a window, through which they bring to light, perhaps not their deepest and darkest,but certainly many of their more abstruse thoughts, hoping a few people might be spying in on them.

Monday, July 26, 2010

Perhaps a Little Too Snobbish a Thing to Say

Many people are in the habit of having notions that they want to believe so much that they just build their philosophy around--or subscribe to a philosophy that fits well with--these notions. I am going to tentatively point this out as a typical habit in "western" thinking.
Another way of pointing this out would be to say, we typically feel a great amount of guilt for a great amount of the things that we do, but rather than change these things we would seek to justify them, in such marvelously ingenious ways, that we come out fooling even our own selves.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

An Apology or: How I learned to stop being frustrated by Wikipedia's cursory articles (on art and literature) and recognize them as manifestations of my high probability of enjoying the art, on which those certain articles had been written

At times I find myself exceedingly frustrated when I hear or read about a film, book, or any piece of art that I find worth looking into, but upon turning to Wikipedia, I find that the article cannot adequately explain whatever it is that I am looking up! My mentality at these times usually goes something like this,
"I'm a busy man! I need to know what art is worth spending my time on! And G-D-it, Wikipedia, it's your job to help sort it out for me!"
It's ironic (and worth noting) that I simultaneously can think this and also understand that any piece of art that I am personally likely to classify as "great" will capture a concept in a way that will not be able to be explained adequately and will only be fully understood upon viewing and comprehending the piece itself.
In other words, the things that I find "inadequately" explained on Wikipedia (I say "things" meaning art) are likely to be the things that I will most enjoy. So I apologize, Wikipedia, for thinking that you were slacking off. Keep up the good work.