Friday, May 28, 2004

The Power of Blog Compels You

(Caveat: You know, I hope, that this isn’t about you. I mean, except for the part where I say how cool you are.)

I find new sites all the time that are witter and more current, wiser and more touching and goddamned funnier than I could ever hope to be, other sites that kick my ass and hand it back to me in a hefty bag, with comments up in the 70s or 90s or higher on every post and a link list of geniuses and international bon vivants, a rarified world in which I could never really even imagine myself participating.... and I think, there are so many of them out there, so clever and savvy, tweaking things on their sites that I don’t even know exist and still putting more meaning and entertainment in a 50 word post than I can eke out of 500.... and I come back here to the ‘hut with its pages on pages of tired white text, its worn old voice and the smattering of comments I glean from those few among my occasional visitors who are charitable enough to cast a word or two in my direction.... sometimes I truly feel, when I see the first comment on a post I really liked coming on line hours - many hours - after it’s been published, that I’m just getting a “pity comment” from some gracious visitor empathetic enough to be chagrined at the total lack of feedback.  I know, it’s neurotic, but that’s where I go sometimes these days.

Then I think of some blogging friends I thought I used to have, and whatever once stood for a relationship between us is just gone.  My comments on their sites resound like hollow echoes and their comments on mine have evaporated entirely, their hits soaring as mine slowly dwindle. I can’t help but feel a bit jealous, resentful, covetous, petty as the tide surges forward, carrying further they who were once my peers but now outpace me; meantime, I drift slowly backwards into a murky unknown, where my talents are ordinary at best and my words shatter brittle in the night air, leaving no more impression than the shadow of glass. It leaves me wondering why I do it. 

But then I remember: there was no choice, I never decided.  I always wrote.  I wrote all through school - bad poems and long unsent letters, illuminated doodles, fables, jokes; I developed a sense of rhythm that demanded satisfaction and a love of words that I needed to feed, and the pages filled notebooks and the notebooks filled boxes before I finally confronted the fact of my addiction to rearranging words and got myself this journal to stoke my jones.

This medium of blogging brings many diverting novelties to my writing experience, and it’s easy for me to confuse these with the real reason I write.  But this site is not about the comments, the hits, the geeky tweaks or the purported social status inherent in my links list.  If it turns out I’ve alienated every damn person I thought was my friend on line, I regretfully accept it but I will still go on.  I’m not doing this for them.  I’m not even doing it for me.  I’m doing it because I can’t not do it.  I just write.  I just do.  This site helps me hone that craft as best I can: compels me to produce my best work according to my own standards, to extirpate typos and to refine my prose.  It’s nice to hear from people who visit here but I must finally embrace the fact that we are all bystanders at this trainwreck. It was going to go down anyway; the ‘hut just happens to have been fortuitously located so as to provide a convenient vantage point from which to view the carnage.  That is, if you are of a mind to do so.  But either way, the writing will just go on.

what—you’re not a comment-whore like me?  i had no idea you were above all that… :)

Exactly.

My best posts tend to be the ones I feel compelled to write.  The worst are the ones I post just because I feel I should.

I love comments.  I also love imagining that I have a huge audince who have never commented on my site but who read me religiously.  A girl can dream, can’t she?

given our earlier conversation, i feel some pressure to make this is a great comment, but eh, i’m buckling under said pressure.

You wrote ‘go on’ way too many times my friend. Now I have that blasted Celine Dion song in my head. The insipid thing from Titanic. For that alone I think I shall stop being your friend. Well, and there’s still the small matter of the $999,988 you owe me, but i was willing to work through that one. Foisting Celine on me, however, is an unforgivable thing for sure.

Anyhoo. As Mr. Aplenty so eloquently put it, “Exactly.”

Ditto and all that.

Despite the dwindling number of comments, I predict that this entry will garner a fair number of them. Ironic, no? Like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife.

chuckles: i know this feeling, this whole progression of feelings. what i am shocked and apalled that YOU feel this way.

p: oh come on, deep down, we’re all comment-whores.

I’m not so deep about it - I am a total comment whore. Go ahead and post “LOL” and leave. That’s enough for me.

But I agree with Jules… of all the people to feel this way - Chuckles? No way. Chuckles is one of those blogs that makes me feel like an intellectual turd, like I am no where near smart/funny/cute enough to even look at it. Although I always plan to be the secret stalker...looming in the background with my dictionary and an arsenal of smarter people to help me translate.

I still stand behind my post of awhile back when I said that I post what I want to because I want to, if you don’t like it hit the back button and never click my link again!

Not to stroke your ego too much but I love reading your stuff and if you knew how picky of a reader I am you would feel even more complimented!

Now where is that carnage, I love carnage!

you use big words
it scares me sometimes into not commenting so as not to feel like a philistine. 

p.s. we love you

i am utterly convinced that there is zero correlation between comment count and writing quality.  the fact that there aren’t a million comments on all your posts is exhibit A.

First time reader but not last time listener.  I love what I have read so far.  I’ll be back and be ready for some not so intelligent comments.  Oh yeah I’m not the ‘ol ball and chain now I’m Jeff A’s lovely wife.  HAHAHA

Here, here!  Or is it hear, hear?  Damn, that’s one of those things you would know.  Which is why I come here.  I love your writing, but more, I really enjoy the perspective you have.  You can oftentimes put to words, the thoughts that have been rattling around in my head.

And yes, I completely agree about the writing.  Blogging has given me a voice that I needed.  It’s funny that I’ve kept journals here and there in my life, but nothing consistent.  This is consistent, and it’s fun, and it helps me… find me.  Wow.  Don’t step in the mush.

Keep bloggin’!  (you comment whore… jk)

I honestly don’t think it’s possible to be a blogger and NOT be a comment whore. I mean, really. Who are we doing this for? US? Um no. We have journals for that. We are doing it to gain an audience and have people tell us how great what we just had to say was.

I’m with Jules, though. I was very shocked to hear Dan say he’s a comment whore, too.

But Dan, you do realize (and I’m seriously not trying to blow smoke up your ass) that you are a really talented guy. I’m sure you’ve heard that a few million times in your life. Your prose is mostly always scintillating - which is why we always come back.

Oh - and you rarely comment my blog. Humph. Better get on that.

I guess I think writing is much the same as theatre has always been for me, it’s much too hard to do it for any reason other than you can’t NOT do it.  The reward is always in the act of doing it...anything else that comes of it is pure gravy.  Sometimes that gravy is nice, but it’s not the motivation.  I find the community of bloggers to be a great source of encouragement for me, I’m thrilled when anyone comments on my blog...but like you I’d write even if no one did, just like I did before the blog.
All that said...I so appreciate that you share your writing with us in this forum because it is rich, unique, joyful, insightful and just damn good!

Yes! I’ve been going through the same thing and really not having the time online that I used to. I wondered if I could keep up with blogging and writing. But when I try to take a break or quit...it pulls me back in (said with my best Al Pacino).

It was hard for me to keep my hands to myself for 24 hours and just let those sentiments reverberate in the cybersphere, letting myself evaluate whether they made sense to me and to see where they took other people.  I truly and deeply appreciate every comment you good people left here - more even than I usually appreciate any of your comments.  This was an even-more-than-usually self-indulgent post, and your responses were charitable and encouraging and still appropriately chided me for my childishness.  I guess I’m trying not to be a comment whore but they feel so good and they look so sporty in the locker room… I just had to confront myself out loud in writing in public that they’re not why I write, it’s like I like candy but that’s not why I eat.  I’m feeling better about blogging in and of itself, comments or not, than I did yesterday, even without these great comments, but these comments help me feel as if I’m actually in a community of some sort, that the words we cast out into space aren’t just independently seeking the edge of the universe as it infinitely expands away from us.  I’ll try to lay off the Celine Dion lyrics (though I think, pea, your fixation suggests that you need some sort of crappy cliche detox process, or at least at Dionectomy) and though it’s been challenging lately to visit and comment with you all as much as I’ve wanted to, that should be changing soon and I am committed to returning the positive boost that you all just gave me.  Looks like my two-year blogivarsary is coming up - maybe this was my existential struggle in response to crepitating age.  Or maybe I just had a bad sandwich for lunch yesterday, that’s a very good possibility too.  But that day and that mood are behind me and I’ve got lots of weird stuff stocked up to share here.  Thanks for keeping me enthusiastic about sharing it with you.

dan, all that stuff you said in the first paragraph?  your site is one of the ones that makes me feel that way.  it’s powerful to read - evocative, touching, poignant, funny, thoughtful, care-ful.  you write with a generosity and insight and a flare for language that, frankly, makes me jealous, makes me feel like a poseur in comparison, even though i know it’s not a matter of comparison.
and i’m glad you’re doing a titanic (going on, and on ...), because my days are better when i can read your posts.  thank you for this one, and for putting so much of this world into words.

I always save your site for when I’ve got the time to really enjoy your writing.  I always had the impression that you wrote for writings sake.  Thank you for sharing it all with us

About once a week I resolve to remove the comment link on my own blog because it’s so disappointing to see Comments(0) over and over and over.  But I accept it because I’m convinced it’s Commenting Karma - I rarely leave a comment on blogs I love because I’m afraid the regular non-lurker readership will roll their eyes and think “who’s THIS rube?”

amen.

You summed it up nicely.  I’m still new to blogging, but I mostly do it because I’m too lazy to keep a journal.  Somehow I can motivate myself to write things in the blog.

So I write for me. 

Keep it up.

you rock, dan.  glad to know you won’t stop whatever happens. 

i, too, argue with myself about once a week on the subject of disabling comments, as it really bugs the shit out of me that i care at all.  i write cuz i wanna say something.  but then i think of the cool people (like you) i’ve “met,” and i just can’t do it.  and then i think of the only one or two very uncool people i’ve “met,” and i think, hmmm.  and then ...

I feel bad when I get busy and don’t get by people’s sites as frequently as I like to. I try and leave a comment whenever I stop someplace, but usually only if I feel compelled and/or have something to say.