Why are we blogging??? (April review)

It's May 1.

I am getting really addicted to blogging recently. The main reason is that I have been working on this project for a show in September and the blog is a good way to rest my eyes (note that in the 21st c. sense, "rest" means straining them up to the point of damaging them whereas drawing is past that point). But I want to figure out why I am doing this. As L- pointed out, I am talking to myself a lot of the time. That's not entirely true - there have been some very caring and interesting comments here, especially when I take the time to write a post with a more clearly developed and interesting idea behind it and interesting visual content. But since it's clear that I am my biggest audience it would be reasonable to conclude that I am doing this for myself. That is actually OK with me. Sometimes talking to yourself is a great way of clarifying what you think. That's why people keep diaries, right? I certainly don't think it's so you can remember what you did... The thing about a blog is that it is PUBLIC. Putting private thoughts into the public sphere - how strange it is and what an ancient theme! L- and FameIsMagic are quite smart about this! I am trying to make my artistic practice work, and this blog may be training for me to develop ideas that relate more directly and honestly to the thoughts I am having in my everyday life, to enable me to communicate more openly, to identify the things that are meaningful and worth sharing with other people, and to develop a productive practice. But the blog also serves affects my life directly - the age old example being that if you somehow are observing, recording, and sharing your life, whether it be through writing, painting, 24-hour live video feed or whatever, that all bad things that happen to you become good things because you have something to share. Not that I share much of what happens in my life here... But I still ascribe to the philosophy that my life is boring and nobody wants to read about it. I'm not ready to give that up yet.

In the months after I moved to Osaka in 2001, after being right near the WTC thing, I would often have these horrible psychotic episodes or panic attacks or something where I would sweat a lot or freak out or get sucked up into my mind or something. It usually occured after becoming unduly fascinated with a sensation of deja-vu, or trying to remember a dream, or writing a song (I plan to do a post on some of these soon). I was working a swing-shift and sleep deprivation had something to do with it, as well as a combination of mild PTSD and being in a new culture without familiar social structures, i.e. friends to talk to about these strange episodes. Anyway, these things kept happening at work and led me to distrust myself, to be afraid of opening doors in my mind or to pursue my own thoughts too deeply. The only arena where I could think safely was in my art. This is why I was so pleased when I decided to drive all words from a practice of drawing that had been, throughout an intense senior year at Bard, very much an open diary with very specific verbal references to real life events, however deeply veiled and obfuscated. Why were they not straitfwd communications about my life? Because I was not trying to understand my everyday life - I was trying to understand the fundamental aspects of myself, of my mind, that had little to do with what was happening everyday, that had little to do with what exact people I met and books I read. A direct reference destroyed these things by pointing to the surface of the outside world. But in the drawings I made in Osaka I discoved that by eliminating the verbal entirely I could explore methods of communicating that disarmed the verbal thoughts that were alternately so boring and dangerous, and use the energy released by this fission to find a way of thinking that is not verbal. These drawings started to become very powerful to me - their power was in catching my eye and holding it without throwing words at it, and this helped me recover from my major malfunction. So too have many recent projects including this blog taken the events of everyday life and disembodied them, leaving only their fundamental energy trace. But I have been working my way up from the foundation of drawing that I developed in Osaka, becoming more and more verbal and more and more dealing with the specific and identifiable events that make up everyday life. The drawings are who I am, but they, like me, hardly have a place in the world at all. But as I learn how to verbalize these ideas, I suddenly find myself alive again, able to touch physical things rather than watch my hand pass through. Soon I am able to set them up the way I please, and to walk around in public. It is a true wonder.

So that would be one way to understand what I am tring to do.

Anyway. Next month I would like to include a bit more of my everyday life items - oh and I'd like to write a bit more about the books I read because I read a lot and forget what I read right away. Perhaps this will help me understand myself better, and it's not like I am wasting too much collective time because, as has been pointed out to me, nobody reads this. This said in the best of all possible humor. You can't see my face as I write but it is usually like this :) if it is not like this (xoX).

Anyway, now it's time for the monthly review - to look at what I were doing to see if it worked. This is a surface analysis:

The month opens with pictocracy beta, a post about the project that has now been mutated to fill the void left by the slow death of Glypix. I was excited to post this and see the results on YouTube and I am excited about the possibilities, but I will never be satisfied with the interest these things get until they reach a kind of critical mass the way the Colbert video did.
Passed over was not actually about passover. Fairly confused, but I am going after this kind of specificity that sometimes implodes. Now seems evident that I should have written about passover.
Penguin Club is still an amazing and completely unknown music. Only one person downloaded this - you should too!
The workers are human too was about how to compress YouTube videos, but quickly became more of a private rant about, what, holding your beath? I don't know - it seemed important at the time. But the specificity seems a bit more structured.
Searching for sentences on google is a brilliant post - learning that other people have had the exact same sentiments as I did, and creating a kind of narrative created by purely mechanical means (with cheating) - that is what this blog is all about. Or it was that day. But what is a diary if not a deconstruction and fictional telling of your life? I will have to repeat this experiment. These kinds of entries aren't very popular - is that because they are poor? Uninteresting? Are the people not given an "in"? Or are the people all boors? Ha ha. It's funny to talk about "the people" when you are actually talking mostly about your good friends, a few random strangers, and some sock puppets.
New Pictocracy - a bit of the wind going out of the sails of an idea that had seemed so promising. This one was perhaps not as good overall, but the idea of feedback, even if it is only comments on YouTube continues to fascinate - I wonder whether I should debut projects here or on the EPN.
Italian rice pie recipe for Easter - yum! Recipes are the best! You should make this!
Gotta go! - Sometimes an uninteresting post is better than no post at all. And sometimes not. I love ramen.
Music that makes sense to me - "turn my brain off" is an amazing song. Nobody was able to decipher the lyrics for me. Too bad!
Self Archeology was the run away hit of the month - literally thousands of fans had to be beat back with clubs and teargas. Was this post successful because of the images or because of the commentary? The truth us, interesting things - even manufactured ones - only happen to me rarely. Obviously the secret of writing is "having something to say." Imagine that!
The major update was that Dan Gibson has started a blog - unfortunately it doesn't seem to have gone anywhere yet. But he's a maniac, so it might. You should write about music, Dan!
If you have a blog and you eat ants for breakfast you simply must write about it right away. That seems evident.
Oh man. I was so hyper when I wrotelearning to fly. Did anyone try singing this song? I mean, if this seems crazy, well, that is who I am. I just wish I could focus more so writing is less of an excercise routine for my fingers and more of an act of communication. Oh well. It's improving slowly over time, like a dumb dog learning how to woof. No. Not like that. Dogs are born knowing how to woof.
Mehboob Mereis a great song, and this is a pretty successful translation.
Quantum mind is the kind of thing I've been reading about. I'd like to learn how to blog about what I read about - but how am I supposed to make in interesting? This will concern me more this month as I try to write about the books I read.
Another fine song is available for download onCat Bird. It is crazy how crazy things are...
Weather on the sun is more science-fictiony. It think I will be heading into the sci-fi world more regularly myself. Not the books. I mean, my life is ruled by pseudo-science and half-truths.
Good song - after Mehboob Mere I became more interested in Bollywood music - this song is much more beautiful. Go Go! Go!
I'mcardamom crazy. I take it in my coffee.
Interpretation check deals with my new animation project - stay tuned! I hope to be more concrete about my work this month.
At the beginning he says Oh Yeah - listen for it.