I was thinking to list some Things I Resent. Which you're just dying to know. Aren't you.
Funny how the writer places her life at the center of human experience. But what hell if we didn't. It's supreme self-confidence—if by self we mean the writing voice—and Zo sure as fuck is a voice. Frankly, I thought she'd be more raunchy, more kickass—kind of a female rageboy.
But the nice thing about writing voices is that they are who they are, not who you want them to be. They have no neuroses, by definition, whereas you do. Which makes this the healthiest relationship most writers ever know. Sigh. Am I going all Alice Walker-ish? God I hope not. I loathe, in these New Age times, to use words like relationship. Like what I am about to say: this relationship does heal.
I think someone a little less squishy, less Oprah, already said as much: It'll kill you if you don't write it out. Maybe it was Alice. I'll pick on anybody.
One thing I do know: the brain's drive to heal, to recover—in the literal sense, as in finding what was lost—is relentless. Has far more energy than I. Exhausting. What I could do vs. what I do do. A horrifying ratio. Not that I'm judging or anything.
But perhaps this is just another example of What Is The Case. The thoughts being limitless, whereas we are small, flawed and hampered—a.k.a. human.
Like what if you were born with an enormous gift for the dance, broke both legs which mended badly, and found little call for however-talented professional stumblers. Art is funny that way.
What was the subject. Oh, yes. Just this teensy, weensy observation: The web is more than business.
Imagine, if you can, a world without professional bloggers, a term the first time I heard was good for a hoot. Back in the day, maybe six, seven years ago—I don't know, don't ask me about time—you found something in the blackness like Catherine's work (link to come) and were astounded. Now Catherine cannot shine, cannot stagger with her work the way she did then, because Tech is Crunching up the web. Thousands and thousands of little pac-men, operating under the always-distasteful assumption there's no one out there but them.
Never mind, for the moment, that PodTech is going under—and what a shocker that is. There seem to be any number of people who, so far as I can tell, really don't do anything at all. I've searched in vain for what it is they present in in all those Presentations, for which one simply must fly to Europe tomorrow, oh drat. Though I gather, it is often in order present the (really complex) idea of blogging to, shudder, corporations.
My, that was refreshing; a dip in self-pity always is. But have you noticed, the more cleanly you slice the personal, the more you speak to the universal, to the larger life we all lead. If there is one thing the writer banks upon, it is this strange truth that the small is also the unimaginably enormous. Like a pea rolling around inside the Hindenberg—and oh my god, what a way of travel that was. Take your trips to Europe over several days of strolling the promenade deck and peering down at the ocean from a thousand feet. No, there's not going to be any explosion. Just, the personal is the political. (Like that? I just made it up.)
And the politics that result from this awful confluence of professional wing-nuts and the corporation? Teh Suxxor.
Hell-o, TechDirt, you ain't the whole web, you and your kind. I'm thinking, “Take Back The Blogs.” A new movement. Viral as all hell.
What a radical notion. Do something, midst consumer-nation, for absolutely free. Refuse to be (shudder #2) monetized. Lend weight to the idea of the real. To the life that lies beyond Adsense.
Steaming. When my father was a boy, those piles were called Road Apples.Techdirt: “Ultimately, the most meaningful measure of a site or service is its profitability, which, unlike page views or time spent, isn't so easily gamed.”
