It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; etcetera, etcetera. Thanks to the WordPress helper monkeys for providing this handy little summary.
Here’s an excerpt:
4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 28,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 6 Film Festivals
On a personal note, I want to thank everyone who stopped by to read my ramblings, whether you came here accidentally in search of naked pictures of Carice van Houten (a very popular search engine hit, and sorry to disappoint – although you should follow her on Twitter, she’s funny), you decided to browse further because of my contributions to The Huffington Post, or you’re a personal acquaintance and you feel obligated out of guilt to click that link that shows up in your Facebook news feed. A special thank you to Justin Trudeau and Emilie-Claire Barlow for using their celebrity clout to send more than a few readers my way. A very special thank you to the Fabulous Five (you wonderful folks know who you are) and three in particular for proving that friendship in the digital age doesn’t require face-to-face meetings, although some day it sure would be nice to shake your hand and buy you a drink. Who knows, maybe 2013 will offer up that chance. An extra special thank you to my father-in-law, whose comments have done much to bolster my confidence, and who’s unfortunately spending New Year’s Eve in the ER. Faigh go maith go luath, Dave. Copious thanks to his daughter, my better half, without whom this wild and unpredictable enterprise never would have begun.
As I look to “lucky” 2013, I look forward to a year of chances taken, opportunities seized, fortunes made, friendships solidified and most importantly, words written. Hope everyone out there has a very happy New Year. As one of my favorite singers, Richard Ashcroft, once opined, see you in the next one, have a good time.
Confession time: I’ve been negligent again. In the middle of my somewhat obsessive trip through Bondage of late, the ever-awesome Samir from Cecile’s Writers was kind enough to nominate me for the One Lovely Blog Award. It’s always terrific to be acknowledged in this way by our fellow scribes; as I’ve observed in the past, what else is blogging or indeed writing but the cry into the lonely wilderness hoping for an answer? Samir and his colleagues over at Cecile’s are really quite amazing; you should check them out, and often – there is always something different to peruse, a new, insightfully crafted exploration of this mad journey of stringing together words to form images and ideas we have chosen to undertake, whether for the love of language, the desire to reach or simply because we were intoxicated at the time.
I’ve also observed that the words matter more than the man behind them, and so in that respect it’s difficult to come up with seven random things about me that would garner any interest beyond that of my immediate family. Most of what I would consider important to understanding who the guy behind the glasses is has already been divulged in the course of the 175 essays that precede this one. But I shall give it the old college try:
1. I have a crippling addiction to red velvet cake. If there is ever an “RV-Anon,” I could easily be its spokesperson. Assuming my arteries haven’t been completely clogged by cream cheese icing first.
2. The only accent I cannot mimic well is Afrikaner. I can usually spout off a few brief phrases before it starts to devolve into pidgin-Australian meets effeminate German.
3. I was once chased away from near the exterior set of Days of Our Lives at the NBC lot in Los Angeles because I was wearing a Universal Studios jacket.
4. Over 90% of my music collection is movie soundtracks – and not those half-assed packages of unrelated pop songs that are released purely for marketing purposes, but genuine orchestral scores.
5. On a related note, when I am really in a serious spot of writers’ block, the album that has never failed to save me from it is U2’s The Joshua Tree.
6. Queries for my novel have (finally) gone out to literary agents. More to come and good news (if any, hopefully) to be shared here first.
7. I currently (for November, at least) sport a moustache. Squint your eyes at my gravatar pic and imagine the horrors.
Writing is about breaking rules sometimes too, and to that end, I’m going to deviate from the last requirement of this award just a little bit. You’re supposed to nominate an additional 15 blogs that you think merit consideration as well. But I find myself unable to do so. For one thing, ashamed as I am to admit it, I don’t read that many blogs that regularly – I have the “fabulous five” that are linked on my front page which I of course recommend heartily to anyone in search of wordly (not a misspelling) fulfilment. I have a few more that I follow and enjoy from time to time. However, stretching the list to fifteen – arbitrarily slapping a few extra names on there just to reach an artificial threshold would be unfair to the authors of those blogs, and would serve, I think, to diminish the worthiness of their efforts. WordPress is a vast and welcoming sea, and the task should be not for me to point you hither and yon based on what could very well be a fleeting fancy of mine, but for you to plunge in without a lifejacket and discover the many sumptuous treasures for yourself. So instead of hyperlinking fifteen blogs, I’m going to nominate every WordPress blogger who dedicates his or her words to improving our human condition, to expressing positivity and hope. To everyone who wants their work to create a smile somewhere out there in the world – to everyone who wants the words they etch in the unforgiving cement of the Internet to be an enduring message of joy and celebration of all we are and all we can achieve.
This award is for every last one of you, and that’s the best part – you already know who you are. You don’t need me or anyone else to tell you.
The quote kind of says it all, doesn’t it? There are days when the sheer mass of dumb zipping gap-mouthed through cyberspace makes one long for the days when the reach of a person’s stupidity could be contained to his immediate family and circle of friends (or, if he was a politician, to his discouraged constituency). For a sobering majority, Internet access has emboldened us to act like the digital equivalent of a chimpanzee flinging his diaper against the wall. I suppose certain individuals can be so incredibly lonely and frustrated that negative attention can provide a temporary relief from the emptiness – that someone acknowledged their existence, even if it was solely with four-letter words. Trying to picture oneself in that position, one tends to wonder why it wouldn’t be more productive and ultimately satisfying to seek positive reinforcement? Wiccans believe in the principle that whatever you put out into the world you get back threefold – accepting that as a starting point, does the aforementioned chimpanzee relish the prospect of three times the volume of excrement flying back at him?
It’s been observed that in the 21st Century we are all living two lives: our “real” life and our digital one. Employers are keen to evaluate the online activity of potential hires as an equal measure of a person’s character (if a promising, experienced and brilliantly-credentialed candidate interviews well but spends his nights harassing celebrities on Twitter, is that someone you want as a representative of your company?) I don’t see the distinction in how we should act in one or the other. We are both – why do we want to be a jackass in one of them? The digital life gives you the chance to create a strong identity for yourself, particularly since we are all much wittier when we have the chance to think about what we’re typing before we post it. The digital life must be lived consciously, and as a result lets you simply be, free of the hesitations, embarrassments, second-guessing and split-second gaffes that can accompany real-life interactions. You can be clearer, more erudite, more thoughtful and more engaging. You have a clean slate, especially when you choose to be anonymous. My blogging friend East Bay Writer doesn’t post her name or any details of who she is, and tales of her workplace are related with clever pseudonyms. You’d think that without the burden of identity, she has license to be as brutally snarky as she wants, cutting enemies down left and right and railing against the world with little fear of consequence. But she doesn’t. She still crafts a thoughtful, engaging and positive persona, and readers respond to this positivity in kind. Blogging pals Tele, Samir, Pat and Evan use their real names like I do but still, like EBW, remain true to the goal of creating a positive online identity. Contrast this approach to that of any number of anonymous Internet trolls who opt for the darker path and then think about who you’d rather spend time with – I guarantee it won’t take longer than a second to decide.
Our society has come to measure success in decibels, resulting in a level of discourse that makes Beavis and Butt-head look like Rhodes scholars in comparison. The example being set by many of those in the spotlight is that you need not be correct, learned or even particularly interesting, so long as you can yell insults at just the right moment. Naturally, people who don’t have nationally syndicated television shows want a piece of this action too, even if it’s as “trollguy69” on an obscure message board devoted to the third season of Stargate: Atlantis. The trouble is, a flurry of “LOL” responses are the most fleeting of acclaim, forgotten the instant they are posted, and certainly not anything you can build on. Ideas resonate and linger; background noise is just that. Given the option I’d rather try to put something out there that raises the bar, even if it’s to a limited audience, and even if I’m occasionally just wrong. If people are going to hate my guts for what I have to say, I’d rather they hate me for a reasonable point I articulated with intelligence instead of being able to dismiss me because my grammar was all over the map or I mistook a basic fact of existence (otherwise known as the “OMG Lord of the Rings is a total rip-off of Harry Potter!!!” fail).
The world simply would not function if the level of idiocy represented in the digital space was an accurate measure of the intellectual capacity of our entire species. Somehow the trains still manage to run on time and people still live healthy, productive lives. The only conclusion one can draw is that what we see online is certain people acting out of character, indulging their id for some unfathomable sense of gratification. What is somewhat reassuring is that in the grand scheme the Internet is still a technological baby, and accordingly, we tend to act like babies on it. Eventually what amused us as babies is embarrassing to us as teens and positively unthinkable as adults. We will grow, and graduate, and get better at using it to advance our collective humanity. Isn’t it preferable to be one of the ones leading the way? Nothing to LMAO about that.
The one-year anniversary of Graham’s Crackers is fast approaching and it’s been quite the ride. As you’ll have noticed I also thought that in honor of this momentous occasion a new look might be in order. Sorry if things aren’t quite where you left them; I’m still working out the kinks in this new theme. Patience, Daniel-san, it’ll right itself in due time. Anyway, I find myself in reflective mode, ruminating over the last year; posts that I’m really proud of, others that probably could have stood a good solid re-edit before they went up, some I wish I’d never written at all (and you’d be surprised at some of my choices, not that I’m going to reveal them to you. U2 always pisses me off when they introduce a new album by saying their last one wasn’t any good – well what does that mean to the people who really connected with that stuff? Are they then meant to feel stupid for liking it – and spending money on it – in the first place?)
As much as I enjoy being able to write this blog, in many ways it is just as restrictive as it is liberating, for the singular reason that it’s public and people read it. When you’re writing a new post, you can’t put anything on here you wouldn’t be okay with your worst enemy knowing about, because posting to a public Internet forum is the equivalent of draping a banner on your house announcing your thoughts to the world. You’d best be able to stand behind what you say, even if hundreds of people are throwing tomatoes at you. More simply, you must be able to accept the consequences of your free speech – even if those consequences aren’t necessarily negative; often they’re not. But in an age where privacy is fast becoming an outdated concept, how much of ourselves are we truly comfortable with sharing? Many things we go through might benefit from literary self-analysis through a similar forum – how we feel about work, our families, our partners. Experiences our readers will relate to and empathize with. But should we lay them out boldly for all to see? It’s often safer to try and explore those issues allegorically, in the context of reviewing some celebrity’s latest mediocre album.
The futile recall attempt in Wisconsin on Tuesday made me want to put my fist through the wall – I know, it’s not my country, but I hate seeing liberals fail and douchebag conservatives triumph no matter where they live, especially since what happens south of the border invariably trickles north. (Also worthy of punching drywall was an idiot MP here screaming that we should drop out of the UN, and his government abolishing the section of our Human Rights Act that bans Internet hate speech.) When stuff like that happens I want to vent with a vindictive fury in a blistering torrent of profanity that would embarrass David Mamet. But then I take a moment, and a breath, and remember that you wonderful people don’t deserve to hear me in my worst moments. The question is, however, is not letting you see me at my worst somehow dishonest? Should Graham go utterly crackers and spew what he really thinks across these digital pages?
The obvious answer is of course not. People I love read me. People I work with read me. Friends old and new read me. Even people I can’t stand and wouldn’t piss on if they were on fire probably read me. And I am responsible, as Aaron Sorkin says, to captivate you, whoever you are, for as long as I have asked for your attention. Consideration of the demands of our audience is what makes us better writers – even if it arguably makes us less truthful. There is a tremendous difference in how I write versus how I speak – I am much better at organizing my thoughts on paper, but that also means I’ve censored myself at times and rearranged arguments for a more logical flow, so I come off like an erudite scholar with all his literary ducks lined up. When I speak without prepared material, I can occasionally sound like I could benefit from Lionel Logue’s help. But is that more who I really am? And am I lying to you by not letting that guy post here?
Maybe, but I’m also saving you some irritation. A writing class I took once included an exercise where you were forced to write continuously for a pre-determined period of time without thinking about the words or stopping to edit them. You basically let go and let the words take you wherever they were headed – it was raw, unshaped, unfiltered creativity. What resulted was honest, pure and truthful. The trouble was it wasn’t terribly readable, or even particularly interesting. And I think we can agree that the Internet is saturated with that sort of material already.
Self-expression is freest when no one is listening. As soon as a monologue becomes a dialogue, the dynamic changes into something else entirely – a conversational game of Pong, with words and feelings evolving and morphing into new ideas and concepts with each volley and return. I’ve always been a bit uncomfortable with the idea of publishing the diaries of noted individuals after they’ve passed on – while the insights we garner into their eras are valuable from a strictly historical perspective, for the most part these were never intended to be seen by anyone else. They were intimate confessions with the sole purpose of giving the writer the opportunity to heal their wounded soul in private, away from the judgment of others. To that end I wonder if perhaps it’s better to accept blogging for what it is, and continue to explore the truth within its limitations, the yin and yang, give and take with the audience. Ironically, I find something liberating in that.
“This new learning amazes me, Sir Bedevere. Explain again, how sheep’s bladders may be employed to prevent nonsensical blog comments.”
Spam, as the old Monty Python song reminds us, is ubiquitous – you get it whether you like it or not. We’re all familiar with the Viagra ads and the dubious promises of freaky sexual encounters that show up in our email inboxes. The spam you get on blogs is a bit different; I’ve yet to be assured that I can expand my manhood by several inches in only 30 days, or that Prince Nbeke Mbala desperately needs my help in extracting his oil fortune from Lagos, Nigeria, if only I can send him my bank account details and exclusive rights to my firstborn. Really, the spam you get in the comments is quite dull. No one is trying to sell me anything, or asking me to click on a weird link. What if these are genuine comments from lonely people just looking for a connection, cruelly barred from my site by the unfeeling, unsympathetic Akismet? What if all they want is an answer? Well, let it never be said that I don’t consider the needs of my fans. Here we go:
“Omar” writes:
I thought your video was very intgihsful. I’ve been blogging for about a year & just like Missmikela I’ve yet to make any real money. How did you join Glam, were you referred & also who do you recommend for text links.
Hi, Omar, glad you found the video full of intgihs. I’m pretty sure she told me she was eighteen, but I wasn’t sure what the stuffed elephant was for. Anyway, I’ve been to Missmikela’s site and quite frankly, with the questionable theories she puts forth about French deconstructionist literature and its relationship to early Marxist writings, I’m not surprised she hasn’t picked up any spare coin. My work with Glam kind of began the old-fashioned way – I was enjoying a malted in the soda shop when the agent walked in, handed me a card and asked if I’d done any modeling. The shabby furniture in the office should have been my first clue, but sometimes it’s just nice to be noticed. Besides, you can barely tell it’s me in the pictures. Thanks for writing!
“Gabriela” says:
So much good stuff! Can’t wait for these. I love the new extra weapons some of them come with. I was gttieng tired of the previous ones, so many already and all the same ones. These have more of a mix of weapons.Aside from that, so many great figures, even the repacks. Don’t care much for the game though.
Hey there Gabriela, I know, I was just saying the other day that when I really need to kill something it’s good to be able to choose between the rocket-propelled Semtex grenades and the super-high-velocity repeating bolt action rifles. A week ago some guy in the mall was looking at me funny and I thought to myself, “if only I had my depleted uranium shell crossbow, I’d show him a thing or two.” I agree, I much preferred the first version of the game where the princess was in the other castle and there were only twenty-six mushrooms to jump on while avoiding the giant monkey. Appreciate your thoughts!
“Edinaldo” opines:
First, I’ll give you an example for me. I have a nomarl blood sugar reading of 72 and the nomarl should be 80 120. Sometimes, our bodies can get use to something and that can be our nomarl. As for your situation 90/47 is a very low blood pressure. The bottom is low and the top isn’t to bad. However, you do not want them running close to each other because of risk of stroke or pass out. The nomarl reading for blood pressure is 120/80. So, if you take that into account your blood pressure is moderately low but your body could be use to it.There is no reason for concern.
Wow! Thanks for the reassurance, Doctor Edinaldo. Are you the guy from that weirdly compelling telenovela? I was a little worried after eating that triple cheeseburger with the fried chicken bun and the barbeque sauce when I started feeling palpitations in my thigh. The weird thing was I was running a half-marathon at the time. But as long as I increase my daily ice cream intake and follow it with a few good shots of straight vodka at bedtime, I should be able to get this rash under control. The twitching and night sweats should stop shortly thereafter. Have a great day!
And finally, from the very cranky “Vasile”:
Well What do you think? It’s not rocket siccnee. I was complimenting you. Where in that sentence did I say, It sucked and was a bad movie ? I said that I remember the good old days using Intel Play and that it couldn’t have been any better with the amount of technology Intel Play provides. Now this I don’t get: Are you a kid or a teenager or what?
I understand where you’re coming from, my friend. There were script problems from day one and honestly, when you’re dealing with a diva like Marjoe Gortner it’s tough to keep the big picture in perspective. I’ve never been a fan of Intel Play – I thought their first album showed potential but their misguided foray into Turkish hip-hop was a load of pretentious tripe, and what the hell was with that eighteen-minute timpani solo on “Who Loves a Sailor Then”? I dig a good set of kettle drums as much as the next guy, but come one, even artistically speaking a little goes a long way. In answer to your next question, yes, I may come off sounding like a guy in his thirties but I am in fact just on the high side of seven, and I am mocked on the playground constantly for my references to Proust and Aeschylus, but then again, at least I don’t wipe my nose with my sleeve very much anymore. All the best!
Hat tip to East Bay Writer who publishes her blog spam as a regular (and hilarious) feature.
“Some people can read War and Peace and come away thinking it’s a simple adventure story. Others can read the ingredients on a chewing gum wrapper and unlock the secrets of the universe.” – Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman), Superman
During the month of March I made a consistent effort to blog every single day, and for the most part, managed to stick to that schedule. (Sundays were a little scattershot depending on the preceding Saturday night’s extracurricular activities.) Both the news and the mundane quirks of my life offered ample fodder for linguistic rumination – and there could always be additional pontificating about The West Wing if either of the former were found wanting on any given day. Lately I’ve gotten a bit lazy, and it isn’t for a lack of inspiration, but rather that I find myself less satisfied with writing things that have no deeper meaning.
Perhaps it’s a natural evolution as time and experience add up. Maybe it’s the pressure of starting to build an audience – there is certainly a form of liberation to one’s self-expression when few are listening that diminishes as expectations begin to rise (don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for each and every one of you out there reading me!) When one occasionally scratches at the edges of greatness, or, more to the point, writes a post that really touches someone else, the demands of living up to that standard increase exponentially. It isn’t a matter of seeking constant validation – it’s more that when you see what you can do with that space, you find yourself less comfortable wasting it on posts about space vampire zombies.
Lest this be dismissed as the lament of another struggling writer feeling sorry for himself, let me first say that I too find literary navel-gazing to be tiresome. I still recall watching a panel discussion of scribes about fifteen years ago and finding myself repulsed by a pretentious cigarillo-smoking douche who droned on about how he’d hadn’t been able to write a play in ten years. It isn’t by any means that I think I can’t write, or that I’m finding the muse elusive. I just don’t want to write crap. I don’t want to write it, and I don’t want to ask anyone out there in Internets-land to read it. I want what I write to be meaningful and thought-provoking. To be consequential. I’d rather let a day or several go by without a solitary word than publish hackery for the sake of having something to post. So yes, when you’ve written in tribute to President Obama’s support of same-sex marriage and its greater historical and emotional context, what do you do for an encore that even comes close to a subject of such importance? Reviewing The Avengers or talking about the sixth season of a TV show that’s been off the air for nearly seven years doesn’t quite cut it. That, I suppose, is the danger in “very special episode” syndrome – you run the risk of making the rest of your work look like substance-less piffle.
Yet you can’t shy away from tackling the big questions if you feel you have something to say about them. To do otherwise is to not be truthful to who you are and what you believe. And that brings up an interesting point.
Writing is therapeutic for many people; a chance to process our confused feelings about a world that fails to make sense most of the time and strip away the layers of contradiction to find the truth at the core, and at the same time, peel the layers of self to unveil the essence of our soul. It’s rather like sculpting – the masterpiece is there underneath, you just have to chisel away the unneeded bits of the stone. Devoting a post or two to cotton candy instead of meat and potatoes can still be a worthwhile exercise, inasmuch as there can be a sculpture waiting inside every size and shape of rock. Some stones may shatter into pebbles when you begin to carve them, and some may turn out to be nothing more than misshapen lumps, but the potential of art always remains, the supply of stones is endless, and each stone contains a grain of truth. So maybe those posts about breakfast and reality television interspersed with the grand philosophical musings are all necessary stops along this journey, and we shouldn’t fret so much about whether or not a less-imposing topic is worthy of our discussion here. You’re arguably more likely to stumble across something unexpected and wonderful when you start from an otherwise innocuous premise. For me, the potential of that discovery is worth saddling up more often than not, because regardless of what you think the destination is, you don’t really know where you’ll end up until you actually start moving.
There’s an old saying that the cream rises to the top, but so does the scum. (Just look at Congress.) The same applies to writing. For every successful masterpiece, there is an equally profitable pile of crap. I read with bemusement this screed from one of my fellow Huffington Post contributors this morning in which, with a nod to Sideshow Bob, he engages in the ironic device of blogging to decry blogs. Now, he is in high school and has a lot of living to do, so one can understand and forgive the sweeping judgement pronounced therein. I don’t know him at all; we ranks of HuffPosters are vast and we don’t regularly (or ever) get together to knock back single malts. He may be a rather smashing bloke in spite of the mildly condescending tone with which his post is composed. But I can’t agree with his thesis that “uncontrolled publishing,” i.e. blogging, is destroying literature. I’d say it’s forcing those of us who take writing seriously – which I’d suggest given my experience is a majority of bloggers, not the reverse – to up our game . If one hopes to be noticed amidst the cacophony of background noise and Bieber fandom, one must aspire to be magnificent. We might not achieve greatness every time, but the fact that we’re trying means something in itself. And the blog gives us that opportunity to try.
My unmet cyber-colleague uses an allegory of William Blake physically carving poetry into the roof of a favourite drinking haunt to criticize the supposed ease with which words can be assembled and flung out into the world in the 21st Century; the argument being, seemingly, that without limitations to overcome with sheer force, writing can’t possibly be any good. Blake, he says, had to craft his verse methodically and with care, paying attention to the shape of each syllable, every minute detail of meter and imagery. I fail to understand how that level of dedication cannot still be achieved with the use of a keyboard instead of a chisel. If anything, I’d argue that the delete key and the ability to revise easily has lowered our collective tolerance for sloppy mistakes, for ill-advised turns of phrase and general unprofessionalism (leading to the birth of that most pesky of trolls, the Grammar Nazi.) If fixing a mistake is simple, then there’s less excuse for letting them slip through. And ultimately, the most wonderful aspect of Internet browsing is that beautiful little red X in the upper-right-hand corner of the screen. If you don’t like what you’re reading, close the window and move on to something else. Uncontrolled publishing may allow a flood of mediocre writing into the ether, but it has no effect on freedom of choice. To read, or not to read, remains our question.
Publishing is now, if it has ever been the reverse, less about quality and more about what will sell. This is not a criticism; publishing is a business, staffed by people like you and I, working to feed their families. If a barely coherent rant about shopping and shoes by a D-list reality television star moves X number of copies more than a brilliantly crafted treatise on deconstructionism of modernist attitudes in 1920’s France by an unknown doctoral candidate, well, Snooki gets the rack space. It sucks, but forget it Jake, it’s Chinatown. That’s a problem originating with the audience, not the existence of blogs. Until the world at large turns away from its fascination with the banal, publishers are obliged, in order to keep their business going, to cater to demand. Basic economics unfortunately, and literature gets a solar plexus to the gut in the process.
Where blogs can turn the tide, though, is in their openness and accessibility. You do not need to be famous or have an “in” with an agent or a major publishing house to invent a domain name and start writing and publishing. I am reminded so often of The King’s Speech and the fundamental reason why that movie struck such a chord with people – not because of the performances or the direction or any one particular element of its filmic construction, but because of its theme, the universal desire to have a voice. To be able to speak, even if no one, for the time being, is listening. There are over 150 million blogs in the world, covering probably far more than 150 million different subjects. Some are brilliant, and some are execrable wastes of time. But they all began for the same reason – because someone wanted to use their voice. If many of these voices produce sounds that are unpleasant to our ears, whether in what they are saying or how they are saying it, we have two choices: we can either call them on it, or we can tune them out. We don’t have to stew in our angst and complain that their mere existence is diminishing the written word.
That Snooki is a (shudder) published author doesn’t depreciate Shakespeare or William Blake or even Aaron Sorkin for that matter. These and other Muses remain figures to whom we can look up, and whose quality we can aspire to achieve, even if we will usually fall short. Blogs give us the wonderful privilege of chance, instead of restricting even the opportunity to a select few. Many will just suck and most bloggers will toil forever in utter obscurity, but there will be the gems. You might come across someone’s memoir of a departed friend that moves you to tears in a way that Blake himself never has or never will. You might read a mommy blogger’s tale of her daughter’s adventures in daycare and unlock the secret of the world. The late Christopher Hitchens said famously, “Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that’s where it should stay.” Note he didn’t say “all cases.” Even for the notoriously prickly Hitchens, the possibility of greatness remained. Literature, or writing in general, must belong to the masses, for what is a masterpiece if it remains unread, or simply unwritten? I don’t know much about William Blake, but I have a feeling that if he were alive today, he’d be a blogger. I’m certainly proud to be one, and I’m not going to stop anytime soon.
Like many of my fellow WordPressians, I find the country view statistics page fascinating. It’s a bit surreal to see how wide your “reach” truly is (and a good reminder to not put anything on the web that you wouldn’t be comfortable carving in cement on your front doorstep). Again, I’m not under any illusion that a lot of these hits are anything but accidental, as search engine terms meet in the conflux of wilderness that is the Internet. But like any good geek, I’m a completist, and there’s an indescribably giddy sensation that results whenever I check this map and see a new country colored in. The sad reality of the world, however, means that barring radical change, none of us will likely ever be able to complete the set.
Glaring exceptions like the over 1 billion people locked behind the Great Firewall of China continue to stand out. North Korea, where despots would rather build useless rockets than let their people watch cats dance on YouTube. Closed internet systems like the ones operating in Cuba and Burma. Iran’s Supreme Council of Virtual Space (ironic given that there are, according to Wikipedia, over 700,000 Iranian blogs.) The big annoying exception there in Eastern Europe, Belarus, where no website is allowed in country unless it has registered with their Ministry of Information first (can’t believe I forgot to send the form in again!) Afghanistan, or huge portions of Africa that are too poor to feed themselves or too consumed by tribal hatred to live in peace, let alone gain anything as First World-privileged as regular web access, are a reminder that this freedom that I and millions like me have to share our words is so very precious, and so terrifyingly fleeting – we need to guard it with our lives and celebrate it at every opportunity. And not only that, we owe it to the rest of humanity that what we are sharing is something worthwhile – worth whatever amount of time we’ve so humbly asked for your attention. Squandering a post on a mindless, misspelled profanity-laced rant about some band you’ve never liked is not only a waste of your own intellect and time, but it’s a virtual slap in the face to millions of people who would love to be able to read what’s out there and can’t because of poverty, oppression or a hundred other reasons that would never even occur to us. We owe it to them to always try to raise our game, to elevate the conversation and push things forward.
There is nothing as singularly powerful or resilient in the universe as an idea, and those ideas can spring from the humblest beginnings; an idle thought on a spring morning can one day come to change the world. On a blog, we don’t have to answer to an editor or fit a predetermined viewpoint based on an advertiser’s demands. We are ideas in their purest form, and participants in a grand tradition dating back to the first time one homo habilis showed another how to use a bone to smash open a piece of fruit (or, depending on your beliefs, to when Eve suggested to Adam that he take a bite of that fruit). So let’s make our ideas good ones.
I’ve got some exciting news to share. This is an excerpt from the list of The Huffington Post’s alphabetical list of bloggers. I have highlighted a particular name.
Further up the list is another name, just added today.
Yep, that’s me! How cool is that? Just goes to show you, never be discouraged – if you believe you can do it, you can make it happen. Wonder if I can convince Mr. Sorkin to collaborate on something?
WordPress just added this incredible feature whereby you can track hits on your blog by country of origin. Admittedly a lot if not the majority of these hits aren’t people looking specifically for my writings, they’re stumbling upon it because search engine tags of a post I’ve written happen to coincide with something they’re looking for. But any writer would like to hope that a few are sticking around because they like what they’ve discovered. One thing is for sure, it sort of puts to bed the idea that you need a massive marketing machine to find yourself a global audience – it also reinforces the theory that the Internet is one of the greatest tools of democracy ever invented, and why its freedom needs to be protected wherever the Ministry of Information dares to try to rein it in. So without further ado, here is where you’ve all come from. And as always, thanks for visiting.
I am humbled. Truly. Saudi Arabia even??? Yowza. The only thing I have to add is, come on Japan and New Zealand, get with the program here. And Greenland is not that big.
Graham's Crackers 