blogging from life / blogging from mind
I don't usually write about what is happening in my real life here. That is just my blogging style. FameIsMagic (will talk to computer) writes about office appliances and feelings, but I don't. Partially because I don't make a coherent effort at hiding my ID, but partially because I can't imagine that anyone really wants to hear about how nervous I was on my interview at Columbia (not very - I'm a pro. Not), how much I drank and who I met in the city, etc. etc. etc. Or maybe it's just cause I don't know how to write about these things so that they sound interesting or significant, the way FameIsMagic does. But I kind of feel like I am missing out on the whole experience of what writing a blog is all about - that anything bad that happens to you becomes something good because you get to blog about it. Bad's still bad for me. I mean, it's not changing my relationship to society in any significant way. I still have a lot of private areas in my life that I don't want to share with everyone. Because they are boring? Because they don't fit the fantasy-self that I am creating up here? Because I am a slow typer?
Anway, it really is amazing how clear-headed Logan was being way back during "The Logan Show" days, when he was saying that we were entering an age in which surveillance and living our lives on the internet would change our ideas of privacy and alter our self-perception. Or whatever he was saying. (Logan spent a lot of time living under cameras in a kind of simulated internment camp on campus being oppressed by Ted Dubok, some kind of dictator or guard or therapist...) Back then, I don't think that I understood exactly what he was getting at. The resulting movie "Logan, Limited" (which isn't on YouTube yet...) seemed to me to be about an alternative fantasy world, a negatopia, or just an expression of Logan's private concerns, but he was actually being super-smart in predicting where our society was going. Because a lot of artists are also futurologists. (Or at least I'd like to be.) Maybe he should have explained it differently, or maybe he shouldn't have tortured his audience so much, or something. But anyway, respect.
Anyway, FameIsMagic and I recorded a few conversations and monologues as the intro to her new YouTube-based vlog. This is pretty interesting. If you haven't ever talked to a camera before about your life (I have) - it's HARD!!! First of all, it's really unforgiving. Conversations in real life aren't like thesis statements. They're not even like conversations on reality shows. It really makes concrete the abstract concept of VOICE. Who are you talking to? The cameraman? Yourself? Your imaginary audience? The 1 or 12,000,000 people who could potentially watch it? Makes for some pretty awk. and self-conscious talking, and I think FameIsMagic did pretty well, with room to grow. I'll post here when we get those up.
The thing about blogging from mind is, my brain was racing all weekend. I must have thought of three thousand things I wanted to write up here - profound things - no really. But your mind is infinite and never strikes the same place twice. So how can I suppose to even try to write down thoughts from two days ago? They will be stale and simple. The only thing to do is to think live in realtime and hope that the fingers type it. That's blogging - a little shocking true-to-life psychedelic brilliance, and a lot of mud. Maybe once cameras become more transparent (less clunky) we will be able to capture the moments in ou conversations where we really shine, but by then we will all be dehabilitatingly self-conscious all the time. That'll be a smart smart world with no real life.
In the meantime, I'll leave my private life a mystery and save you all the boredom.
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3 comments:
I wanted to say something but I... but I...
"Logan, Limited" was, like, my big masterpiece. But for a few years now I haven't wanted to talk about it at all, because it became embarrassing to me. Most people found the whole idea of voluntarily living in a dog cage, bathing in garbage, etc, baffling and a bit frightening. And I have to admit that I used the project to work through a lot of personal issues (my exaggerated fear of having my personal space invaded, for instance). But I think nowadays we've become so accustomed to reality television & surveillance culture that my project has finally become comprehensible to people, so it's probably time for me to start talking about it again.
When I started the project (which, to recap, involved emptying my dorm room of furniture, installing a 7-foot steel dog kennel, an intercom system and surveillance cameras, and employing my next door neighbor to act as an absurdist jailor who invaded my space, woke me each night, blasted music, and otherwise terrorized me for an entire semester of my junior year), I did it to critique "reality television" and "surveillance culture", which were both new ideas at the time (1999-2000). Reality TV had not yet hit the states, but I was reading about shows in Europe, including "Big Brother" (which, incidentally, premiered on American television the same week my movie "Logan, Limited" opened in NYC). At the time, I thought these shows were forms of Fascist entertainment and the pleasure derived from them was akin to that of a jailor who, for his amusement, encourages his inmates to fight. My project was meant to take the humiliation and violence inherent in reality TV as far as possible. As previously mentioned, I was forced to bathe in garbage one night. Another night, I was awakened by the sound of glass bottles shattering directly above my head.
Looking back on the experience, however, I see that it was a time of great freedom for me. I had a tremendous amount of fun and felt more "liberated" than at any other point in my life. So, a project that initially started as a critique of surveillance, a critique of reality TV and a critique of the artificially constructed nature of contemporary life, became, rather a CELEBRATION of all those things.
When I was growing up, Americans were very protective of their privacy. "Right to privacy" was a phrase that showed up a lot in television news stories. (Perhaps someone else can give examples or statistics). Anyway, times have changed. Most people no longer worry about their "right to privacy." They voluntarily give up their privacy all the time, whether for the sake of homeland security or for their share of the newly democratized system of fame represented by reality tv, myspace, webcams, blogs, amateur porn, etc. All the old noise about a "right to privacy" is really just paranoia, it's a social disease, and it's slowly dying out now that we've all been properly innoculated into the brave new world of total visibility and transparency. People who talk about "right to privacy" really just want the freedom to live their own lives in little cages of paranoia. Most Americans, thankfully, have gotten beyond this now. We have exchanged our "right to privacy" for a "right to publicity." We live in the open. Online, on screen, "on" all the time. Tune in, turn on, stay on.
Logan -
You have to talk about these things on either the EPN (where there is more of an audience than here) or on your own blog. Because it is really interesting and you're a clear and interesting writer.
FameIsMagic is really into private vs. public. Or maybe I am. I can't tell. You read her blog, right? Will talk to computer?
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