No More Blogging For Me.
December 1, 2008 at 7:04 am | Posted in blogging, links, writing | 24 CommentsTags: blogging, links
When I first started this blog I used to say, I am not blogging, I am creating a multidimensional text that reflects my interest in non-linear time, art history and theory and playing with wordage. I went around talking to other writers, expressing my opinion honestly and trying to engage in meaningful and robust discussion. I did what I could to offer encouragement and support. I met some wonderful people, some interesting and skillful writers.
I am not blogging anymore.
And here is why. ( “Art Predator earns gingaTao seal of approval.” Check out the comments section.) Oh and if you like have a look at the related poem in Bolts Of Silk (thanks Juliet).
So no more ‘blogging’ for me. Instead I will be posting my writing and expressing my opinion honestly, engaging in healthy and robust discussion and offering support and encouragement to the people around me. Oh, that’s right, business as usual. Now if I connect this doodad to the concept of respecting the dissenting voice, hmm,
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'And you have to deal with the terrible karma too.' Paul Squires.
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gingatao 
I’ve read this post twice but I still don’t understand … you are not going to continue blogging because of what this other person “art predator” did?
Perhaps its the definition of blogging that confuses me? but what you’ve been doing thus far is really wonderful, and I would not let one person ruin all your fine efforts.
I had planned earlier today to ask you how one becomes a poet … reading your poems here and hearing your comments at my blog as well as sometimes finding your comments on other blogs has got me to thinking about poetry and wondering …
I studied literature in school, but I don’t think I’ve ever known what makes someone a poet. And it seemed to me that perhaps you know, and it’s different to experience art in the present. I love the poets I studied in college — the poets of other eras — but still one longs to have the present moment — to see art grow again like a plant that renews itself.
Whatever good things you’ve done, do not stop now. Do not be discouraged. I’ve seen you encourage others. I hope something I write here encourages you and that you’ll encourage yourself too.
You were so right about “change” (your comment at my blog). Somethings never change, yet change must come. Things can never stay the same, yet timelessness exists. It’s all such a paradox.
How does one become a poet? Are poets like magicians? Can you pull a rabbit from a hat? Where do word images come from?
I’m only a painter!
Best wishes, AK
Why thankyou. No I have no problem with Art Predator, just the opposite, she is a wonderful friend and a fine human type creature. It was the people commenting on the award I gave out that convinced me to stop defining what I am doing as ‘blogging’. It is a question of definition as you point out. Thanks for your wonderful encouragement and support, as I say, it will be business as usual. As for what makes a poet, it’s funny, that was the discussion, many months ago, which triggered the whole sad sorry affair. I contend that it requires a particular way of seeing the world, just as being a painter does and a long process of learning your craft, just as being painter does. There are others, my mortal enemies, who contend that to call oneself a poet one merely has to arrange words on a page and add linebreaks, just as there are some people who call themselves painters because they own a paintbrush. Mostly I put this post so we could have this discussion and get all these issues, particularly the issue of why these people dislike me so much, the whole truth of it, out in the open and in public and then move on.
Comment by alethakuschan— December 1, 2008 #
blogging/not blogging. oh my! can i flatter myself in thinking you’ve been inspired by my indecisive fumblings?!? cos it fun to see what endings are like. they’re kinda…final…and i don’t recommend them. your being the subversive you, the zigzagging lightning bolt. i understand. even when i don’t.
hello, btw, after a little while. 🙂
You are always an inspiration, Peter. Wanna hug?
Comment by peterandthehare— December 1, 2008 #
I wrote in your defense at the other blog, Paul. I hope I did not make matters any more difficult for you. But I couldn’t not say something.
One has to brave the mortal enemies. It’s hard because art arises out of sensitivity. Yet one must be tough too. Sensitive and tough. Like change and changelessness. More paradox.
Some enemies are merely jealous. Make them more jealous with more fine work. Like Jerry Seinfeld on his funny show said, repeating a very old true thing: “the best revenge is livin’ large.”
Write, live large, be Australian. All the line breaks in the world will not make me a poet! The enemies are in error!
Comment by alethakuschan— December 1, 2008 #
But I sure can paint! And you can poet.
Yes you can and our ideas on art are very synchronicitous. Would you like a gingaTao award-badge? Haha,
Comment by alethakuschan— December 1, 2008 #
what you say is mindblowingly amazing. as for the award, itsa cool thing to get it, especially from you, wordmaker, poet artist and bonafide creative enterprise that you r, (your sensibility clearly inspired) and it xpresses a wonderful something about being amazed and happy to see art-theres everything good about that from the global politico of the arts and no negative i can remotely squeeze outtuvvit regardless of whatever promotional byproducts there might be, as IF(one is xpected to live up to some kinda rule from who knows where imposing structure as per mindless habit in a place where essentially the rules dont matter) hello (i am testament to not knowing the tiniest little anything about the medium when i started and now having gained insights, poetry, revelation, music, an avenue of exploration and a place to be free, encouragement and a lot of laughter from following U and the tangents that emerge in a wide wide field where thank god there is a space to refrain from judgement if one so chooses) and you r a recognizable personality on the web no dowt. i think there is a ? about what the medium really is: more a new form w/social interactivity and unlimited possibilities for new ways of communication that is fresh and as yet unfolding and it may continue that way like the iterations of mandelbrot still in a forever fledgling stage while you explore the reaches and cut a new path as such, so it follows, same as any other artist or scientist throughout history U will discover things and throw light on some dark corners, which when revealed are not bathed in dark anymore but become luminous throo the process of growth and change
Tipota, you are amazing. I agree entirely. And I will always be grateful for you making the award for me. It’s perfect.
Comment by tipota— December 1, 2008 #
Wow. There’s a rabbit! Whether pulled from a hat?
What mysteries!
Comment by alethakuschan— December 1, 2008 #
Thank you for calling me a poet before. Your definition may still be too heavy for my frail skills, but it’s a very true distinction.
As a respected person in my life once told me (more or less), ‘anyone can write down everything that happened, but only a writer knows what details are important’.
So too does the poet know of and feel the differences in all of the language’s parts and tenses. I try my best to remember all of this between scrambling between those rare but much loved good lines.
I would say, yes, you are no blogger. You are a writer, no matter what place or time your words come from. Keep the link open, that’s all we can do.
Thanks, Eric. Open links, indeed.
Comment by Eric1313— December 1, 2008 #
This whole thing makes me sleepy. I’m just glad you will still be writing in this blogule-like format, whatever you want to call it. Missive? Epistolary? Message from afar? Words in the ether? Sparks from your desk? I’ve tried to de-blog my blog, when I first started my new one, but the fact is, there is a blog culture, with subcultures, and if people don’t want to engage in subculture rituals, just go somewhere else. The Internet is infinite. Ignore it. I don’t accept awards, but I see them as compliments and simply thank people and when I see them on blogs I might say, oh, that’s a nice one. So much blog bashing! That’s why this time I’m staying semi-invisible. You are more courageous than me. And every one of your comments on my blog is a little award to me. I’m going to sleep now.
Good night Ms Squirrel, thankyou. The internet is infinite but I find it hard to accept quietly when my friends are used in personal attacks on me. Oh well,
Comment by The Querulous Squirrel— December 1, 2008 #
whooo hoo is it hot around here or is it just me?
maybe i better stop playing this piano too…or go for a swim!
anybody want to join me?
Comment by artpredator— December 1, 2008 #
btw, no swimsuits required–but you may need to dive through a ring of fire
Gwendolyn! Action stations, whoop whoop, prepare to repel boarders, haha,
Comment by artpredator— December 1, 2008 #
You are pompous. lol I don’t think I’ve ever been pompous. lol ohhh it hurts! I just come and leave postings on your comments section like my poem, The Missing. Like Queen Victoria would say, “We are not amused.” lol
Comment by Fabian G. Franklin— December 1, 2008 #
Fabian comes back, takes a drink from his bottle of Hennessey cognac, wipes the mouth of the bottle on the sleeve of his coffee stained shirt and passes it to his friend Paul. Now look here old friend. I heard you were the “arbiter of good taste “so lay a lip around this and tell me what you think. Woo hoo, we’ll be drunk by the bottom and won’t care if it was a quart of Georgia moonshine.
I am most certainly the arbiter of taste on moonshine and trouble making, F.G. They go together perfectly well, particularly the Georgia kind. How’s it going my friend, I hope you’re having as much fun as me, it sounds like it, haha, glug lggu glug
Comment by Fabian G. Franklin— December 1, 2008 #
Woohoo! You attracted the attention of the bloggo-police! Thank goodness good people like Gwendolyn have healthy minds of their own to decide on these issues sensibly.
Woohoo. Only people who are saying nothing have no enemies, as they say. And yes, thank goodness for Gwendolyn!!
Comment by Mary P— December 1, 2008 #
Hey Paul. You really should be careful about what gets said around here. Don’t make any sudden moves now. Just scroll slowly, slowly up to the top of your page and look to the right. Do you see him/her?
That unassuming grin looks more than a little suspicious to me.
Ha! That little dude is like the moon, hovering over us. Hoist the mainsail, Brad, the tide is turning…
Comment by Brad— December 1, 2008 #
I have never liked the word ‘blog’ – it sounds unsavoury at best and downright scatological at its worst – and so I think about what I produce as articles (essays smacks of academia) and nothing more. Even to call it, despite its regularity, a bi-weekly ‘column’ has connotations I’m not sure I could live with. You know, for a writer, I really hate words – they so refuse to mean what you want them to.
Oh I know what you mean Jim. Sometimes it feels like you have to wrestle the little buggers and force them into submission, other times they just tumble and play. We should work on this alternative descriptor for what we are doing,
Comment by Jim Murdoch— December 1, 2008 #
brad, i have seen the smiling face! it shows up different places on different pages and i too have wondered what it meant. my latest theory is it means you are a regular reader and so you don’t have to see any ads WP might hide on your blog…
and jim, i hate the word blog too! gingaTao, let’s come up for a new word!
and smiling faces for all! glug glug glug
Glug lgugulug, hmm, is that Aussie Shiraz, Gwendolyn? In a brown paper back? Haha. Yes, let’s see if we can think of a new word. Whoever comes up with one wins…a gingaTao award of appreciation, yayaya.
Comment by artpredator— December 2, 2008 #
this is all too confusing for me so I shall return to the obscurity to which I belong
Ozy! Where have you been? Where are you? We all miss you,
Comment by ozymandiaz— December 2, 2008 #
if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it must be a rabbit
Haha, oink oink, I say. What are you up to these days, Scot?
Comment by Scot— December 2, 2008 #
I’ve been poem-etc.-blogging for 7 months now (since May Day). I’m not really sure why yet.
But this is a poem I wrote back in July that seems apropos:
This lonely poem sits
alone in his blog.
No reader attends me,
not even a frog.
My purpose in life
is simple indeed:
find beauty in myself—
that’s all I need.
Comments are welcome:
come as you please,
from critique to kudo
or even a sneeze.
Philip Thrift.
Philip, I really like your blog. I think you’re writing is cool and smart. But you know, what would I know,
Comment by Philip Thrift— December 2, 2008 #
Oh this is delicious, I’m too sated to eat breakfast now.
(((hug)))
Comment by beeskiffle— December 2, 2008 #
((((ebbeeeskiffle))))
Comment by Paul Squires— December 2, 2008 #
I have been infrequent, again, and it’s obvious I’ve missed quite a lot of action. I read this post, I read that post it linked to, but I must forewarn I haven’t read the train of comments above, so forgive me if some points have already been said or talked about. I’m hopping a bit in non-linear time myself, so I can’t read the comments now but I feel compelled to leave one of my own.
And I don’t plan to say all that much.
All I wish to say is that even from whatever *virtually* I know you, you’re a wonderfully amazing human being, and have a lot of integrity yourself and for others.
I can understand well that it is a fine thread to balance on – of course one can always ask why someone has the authority to award or approve of something. And I feel they should ask that indeed. As they say, the very act of giving freedom is an act that is taking away the freedom of whoever the freedom is being “given” to. Who is the authority that decides one can be free now?
But as I say, it’s a fine line. And, as with many things which balance on this fine line, I think it’s perfectly fine in expressing one’s opinion too. It’s perfectly fine to give an approval or an award, because all that is truly being expressed is that *you”, the awarder, likes the work of someone. Of course it’s all very subjective; a third person is not being denied the freedom of feeling otherwise.
But indeed one should respect the dissenting voice. One thing our whole earth-society has to earn, whether now or after they kill half of each other, is that it is not important to agree on every issue; but what is important is to agreeably disagree. Indeed, if everyone felt the same way about every thing, the very purpose of feeling would be lost, and so would the very purpose of life get vanished. But one should agree that one does not need to feel the same way about things, and respect the people who oppose our thoughts and even love them, because our thoughts are just something we have, not something we are. Much like our body, but that’s a different issue.
Why art is so lovely, no matter which form one practices it under, is because of the infinite possibilities it offers for individuals to be subjective. And subjectivity is the only objectivity in life.
So though I may not agree on defining who is an artist, or who is a musician, or who is a poet, I can still voice that without wanting anyone to agree. People have lost the ability to voice opinions without, at some level, wanting others to follow or find truth in their opinions. All personal opinions are always true for the person who holds them, and if we hold on to them too tightly, we might not be able to give them up, just because “we”hold them.
Defining art, IMHO, or any form of it, is futile. It goes against the very nature of what art stands for. but that’s just how I see it. it doesn’t mean that I want others to see it the same way.
you may not (or may) say that I am a “poet”, because your idea of poetry might be completely different than mine. You may not (or may) say that I am a photographer for the same reason. And then there are so many genres within poetry or photography or anything!
But an artist is that person who continues to do whatever she or he feels they want/ought to do, without it mattering whether others approve of them or not. An artist is a person who finds so much beauty in whatever they do that they don’t want the approval of others anymore. That is why any thing can be, and in fact (according to me), IS an art. Even a simple act of making a perfect cup of coffee!
Personally, I choose art as a tool. The forms are important, but only as far as they serve the purpose in bringing out the content that you wish to bring out. It’s easy to get lost in form, in counting line breaks and meters and labeling and sub-labeling. But it’s a choice.
And though no external approval is needed, or even desirable, but appreciation and encouragement does indeed go a long way. And in giving that, you as a person are never lacking.
I’m sorry I don’t read blogs very frequently anymore. As I have told you before, I have had tremendous quantum leaps in my spiritual journey over the past many months, and there comes a point when the bubble breaks. A point where the understanding grows beyond the level that can even be attempted to be accurately put down in words. And, as wonderful as words are, they loose their shin in front of something much more shinier. And one is filled with such an empowering silence that the moment one desires to communicate it with someone to share it, it seems that words become too verbose to handle it, and the silence remains. A blissful, tranquil peacefulness. And so it is that I find myself writing much less these days, and reading even lesser. I communicate with people, talk to many, many of them, help them to help themselves and in so doing I help myself. And I realize that this “detachment” in the blogging world, where one stops visiting and reading other’s blogs, doesn’t pay off well. Because it’s kind of like a closed circle, where one’s visitors are the ones whom one tends to visit more often.
So though this might affect my visibility, but somehow I cannot get myself to be concerned about that. The blogosphere needs its first revolution; a revolution of truth; where people read because they want to read and the see because the want to see; not because they want to get read or get seen or get heard.
There’s a very old hindi (actually Urdu) proverb regarding this; but I think it’s out of place to be quoted here. But what it depicts, in its essence, is a scene where everyone in a room is singing in turns. And by the time a particular guy’s turn comes, there is only one other person left to hear. After singing, the guy thanks the other one for being the audience and staying on to listen, to which the other one replies – “Oh, don’t worry about thanking me. I was waiting for my turn”.
Comment by Sumedh Prasad— December 4, 2008 #
Paul….
Would you consider designing a GingaTao UNblogging award? *grin*
Blogging? We don’t need no stinkin’ blogging…
Hugs …
Comment by Grace— December 4, 2008 #
[…] originally wrote the poem for Paul Squires (who often waxed lyrical about the non-linear nature of time) and it seems appropriate that the poem has been on such a […]
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