With help from the machinations of Josiah Quintus Roe, I am now the proud owner of my very own blog. But already I am concerned about the risks of turning into the Airport Bar Guy. You are very familiar with this man. The minute you sit down at the bar with an hour to kill before your hop to Boston, he plops down next to you and proceeds to inform you of the story of his life, which is never terribly happy, and often involves the insurance company not paying, the bastards. These are never fun people, the Airport Bar Guys. (The only exception I've seen is an old man I overheard in a 24-hour Kinko's recounting with great zest the story of his wife's departure: "Thank God and Greyhound she's gone.")
There's something about an online journal that inspires just this sort of gushing. It will not happen here. My hope is to battle such solipsism by turning this blog into a forum for impassioned communication. Here's an attempt at explaining:
We live in a world that is wonderful, scattered and sad. Walker Percy once described the postmodern condition as living in a place scrubbed clean from the baggage of past systematic certainties, a place cruel and dangerous but also fresh and full of the possible. It's an era filled with information and almost no way to organize it, with the possible exception of an engorged sense of irony. (We laugh so that we may not faint.) It's not that our lives are dichomized so much as ripped into a thousand pieces, with each piece declaring some sort of message that we suspect is urgent, even if that message is to only buy ourselves a nice yurt. And many of us, Christians or not, are filled with a sense of longing: both God and Greyhound seem to have pulled out of the station five minutes ago.
The Net is, of course, only a microcosm of the PoMo problem. It provides us with so much stuff: so many things to look at, and most of them both beautiful and devoid of context. It seems to me that the only solution for not drowning in these things is to share them, to make them part of a larger conversation, and perhaps by means of that conversation to gather clues about the larger meaning these things hold in this fresh, clean era. The only other option is for each person to make themselves, their own daily feelings, into the object of their longing for context. And we all know what that leads to. The Airport Bar Guy. (And to a great many bloggers, but let's not talk about that.)
So my hope is to use this site to enter into conversation with anybody out there, to share a few things each day that seem meaningful, or at least fun, and see what happens. So here goes nothin'.
P. S. You will note that I have told you nothing about myself with this supposedly introductory post. Patience is a virtue.
Posted by mesh at June 5, 2003 02:57 PM | TrackBackA stellar first post amigo...
But Mesh, the net, oh the net, and bloggin, now, a community of bloggers, that is, not that their a community by virtue of their blogging, but they blog by virtue of their community: to have that longin' a bit more satiated by one more point of contact, even a computer mediated point. now that's some great stuff, imho.
Posted by: JosiahQ at June 5, 2003 04:28 PMdamn mesh.
quite an auspiscious start. i've waited long for this day, and i pray, along with you, that you might avoid the pitfalls of The Airport Guy.
by the way, i commend you for following in the footsteps of all great bloggers by referencing Walker in your first post...
Posted by: andy at June 5, 2003 04:40 PMTwo things
First, Mesh, blogs provide you with a great opportunity to live for the moment. Unlike the Airport Bar Guy, you are not an alcoholic. (I really don't know what I mean by this rhetorical point) You have plenty of things going on. You don't spend your whole life We live every day with drama happening to us. A blog gives us the opportunity to live self-examined lives because we have given ourselves this obligation to relate our lives outside of a private monologue into a public discourse of sorts.
Second, how many times have you sat in an airport bar talking to the "Airport Bar Guy?" How do you know what he wants to talk about? How do you know there even is an "Airport Bar Guy?" Why are you not making a sad generalization out of your limited knowledge of the characters from Cheers and Airplane?
Forever Yours,
I just got back from Holty's bachelor party, so my thoughts may not be too coherent right now...
To Josiah and Andy: Thanks for the kind greetings. It is comforting to have Walker with me in any venture, even in spirit. And Josiah, your point about blogging emerging out of community context is well taken. I think somebody once wrote a fine SIP about that.
To Matt: I am hurt at your insinuation that my knowledge of Cheers is limited. :) But in all seriousness, I don't think I'm creating my stereotype from media images (although those may factor in). I've done a good bit of traveling in the last six years - mostly during summers - and I've found no shortage of people happy to sit down with me and share their stories. But I'll admit I was overstating my feelings about these people: most of them had interesting stories, and I'm glad I heard them. They're real people, individuals, and it's a pleasure to listen to each one.
But the point I was trying to make, however broadly, was that few of the people I've talked to "on the road" wanted to talk about anything but themselves. And the atmosphere in many of those conversations became stifling. And here is where you and I may differ on this whole blogging matter. You want to externalize your self-examination with writing, which is great. But right now I'm becoming convinced that one of the greatest sins in my life is self-analysis. For me it's a thin cover for self-love, even when it manifests in a loathing way. And while I think there's a healthy place for honest self-revelation in this format, I think that for me it will only exacerbate my navel-gazing. And there's so much in this world that's worth talking about, so many things that I see during the course of the day that I'd rather discuss than solely mourn my own troubles. That, for me at this time, is a happier form of "living in the moment," which I think is my goal with my blog as much as it is your goal with yours.
I'm sorry if my first post lost that point in too much pretty rhetoric. That's my chief downfall as a writer.
Posted by: mesh at June 6, 2003 02:37 AMI think I agree with you completely in so far as what you're saying. However I think that hacing a blog that does nothing but tell people at cool things to look at could just as easily be a "self love" device as navel-gazing musings. In both cases you could be asking people to affirm something about you. What any good blog should be is an effort at sharing to benefit others. Again, I don't think that you would disagree with me here.
Posted by: matt at June 6, 2003 11:36 AMBut Matt...
You could say that ANY form of expression is just an offering out of something for people to "affirm you" in some manner or another.
Heck, what's wrong with that? I figure, once they get annoying (i.e. what we consider prententious) they've stepped over some existential line, and then we dont' have to tolerate them anymore.
Posted by: JosiahQ at June 6, 2003 12:54 PMJosiah
I couldn't agree with you more. My point is that it doesn't matter what your blog does (share hours of personal play by play or keep long distance friendships going, or point out friends to cool stuff on the web, the important thing is not what you're doing, but why you're doing it. Hopefully it is to share with others what you think it would be good for them to know.
Matt,
I agree, but I still think somebody's blog can be lame. Now, I'm not sure there's some objective, formal defination (or some kinda decision factor that can be used to determine when it's lame) of when a blog is lame, but I still think there are some blogs out there that kinda stink, for whatever weird reasons...
Now sure, one man's trash is another man's treasure, but it doesn't mean that it aint trash to a group of us...
And personally, I'm really fine with that, and it's enough warrant for me to feel comfortable saying that something stinks or isn't, if enough of my friends and "authorities" think's it thinks...
Which, all to say, that people who gush in a certain manner on blogs annoys me, like it annoys Mesh, and I think he's trying to steer clear of that..
But of course, some folks out there might think Mesh' blog sucks, heck, I do when I compare it to mine.
Posted by: JosiahQ at June 7, 2003 10:17 PM