Archive for July, 2004

Americans Don’t Read

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July 25, 2004

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Last month, the National Endowment for the Arts released the results of a new study: “Reading At Risk” .Its findings, which are significant, and alarming, are as follows:

  1. The percentage of adult Americans reading literature has dropped dramatically over the past 20 years.
  2. The decline in literary reading parallels a decline in total book reading.
  3. The rate of decline in literary reading is accelerating.
  4. Women read more literature than men do, but literary reading by both groups is declining at significant rates.
  5. Literary reading is declining among whites, African Americans, and Hispanics.
  6. Literary reading is declining among all education levels.
  7. Literary reading is declining among all age groups.
  8. The steepest decline in literary reading is in the youngest age groups.
  9. The decline in literary reading foreshadows erosion in cultural and civic participation.
  10. The decline in reading correlates with increased participation in a variety of electronic media, including the Internet, video games, and portable digital devices.

Note that last one…

The Electronic Literature Organization posted news of these findings concurrently with reference to commentary in response by two prominent voices in the field of criticism pertaining to electronic literature (Monfort and Kirschenbaum). There is room for such commentary, not because of the findings themselves so much as because of the speculations made by the NEA about the reasons for the decline in reading. According to the NEA: “Literature now competes with an enormous array of electronic media. While no single activity is responsible for the decline of reading, the cumulative presence and availability of these alternatives have increasingly drawn Americans away from reading.”

The problem, as I see it, is not that the NEA fails to recognize electronic reading as literary reading. The problem is that they do not have enough reason to conclude otherwise. People love television, movies, the internet. Those media are not going anywhere any time soon. I suspect, though, that the results of a future study like this one would be radically different if the NEA were forced to regard these media as something worth consideration as art. I mean, if they had no choice. Wouldn’t it be nice if the vast majority of material on the internet, in the movies, and on television were things that fit the bill as literature, or art? Sure, the problem is that there are other bills to fit, and bills to pay – Media must make money, and in order to make money, it must be entertaining. Art, on the other hand, must be genuinely engaging in order to be significant.

Monfort put it well, saying: Instead of assuming that there’s only competition between different media, why not pose a national research agenda question like this one:

What role can literature play in a changing technological, media, and work environment, and how can it live on and develop in new ways, orally, in print, and digitally?

The kind of bickering and bias that the NEA is encouraging here, it will never solve the problem. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. It’s high time for a compromise. To summarize my thoughts on the subject:

The time is now that the modern-artist’s spirit of experimentation could be taken more seriously and further. Modernism could have embraced cultural developments, and could have added meaning to them, rather than blasting them as a “waste land”. Of course they were a cultural wasteland. They were brand-new, and those in control of the flow of culture we too busy lamenting these new things to contribute any legitimate expression to them.

What if Picasso had drawn Saturday morning cartoons? What if a comic book deserved the Pulitzer by the same old standards? What if the poet laureate was an eloquent rapper?

Comments? Roadmaps? Anyone?

Who Needs Blogs?

Posted

July 22, 2004

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While mining for anything about blogging and the Democratic National Convention, I stumbled upon another consideration. Some people are asking: “Who needs blogs, anyway?”

I might add to this with my own “who needs the ‘who needs blogs anyway?’ question anyway?” After all, the question is little more, on the surface, than the common sense notion that you can’t take everything on the Internet as gospel — and that’s the point.

In a world where subjective truth is very true, and where the individual is king, “The Press” cannot be synonymous with “The Truth”, or can it? I think the twenty-first century press is going to be more like history than it is like science. What I mean is, we will have accounts, not facts. There are, after all, only accounts of facts in the end, anyway.

I dare you: bring me a fact, Go on — oh wait… no… you brought me an account of a fact. Or, if you were clever, you caused me to form my own account. Either way, no fact has been presented, really.

Web Logs are notoriously suitable for two things: “journal”ism and theories — ideas, generally speaking, and stories. Web Logs are especially popular because of the way they make it easy for ANYONE to have a forum for these things, and this frustrates the professional journalists and idea mongers. Suddenly, they have competition that doesn’t play by the rules.

The Journalists say things like: “Bloggers Are the Sizzle, Not the Steak: Convention seats do not turn Internet gossips into journalists.”

Others, like Jay Rosen take a more moderate approach:

“Because I participate in both worlds–the press establishment and the self-publishing revolution represented by blogging–I feel I should interpret one to the other.”

This approach seems like a rare one though, among journalists and also among other professional sayers-of-things, such as the academic literary people.

There is a fine selection of literary web logs out there, offering up some insightful criticism and in some interesting ways. One particularly enjoyable source for this kind of stuff is Daniel Green. Mr. Green says about himself:

By training I am an academic (specialty: contemporary American literature), but several years ago I essentially abandoned academe to focus on my writing.

This allows him a unique perspective on the matter of what blogs are good for, and he delivers it in a clear-headed way: He simply keeps his web log full of articulate and insightful critical thinking about literature.

I’ve arrived once more at my original point: “who needs the ‘who needs blogs anyway?’ question anyway?” What matters is not the medium that you have, how its defined, or even so much what others are doing with it; what matters is whether or not it can be used well. I’m sure there are a variety of ways to use it well. My bias is towards a certain kind of way… I’ll cite an example of what I mean, which I’ve picked up from Ron Silliman

my interest in blogging can be looked at from two perspectives. First, I was seeking out a medium for myself that would let me organize my thinking with regards to poetry, poetics & the concentric circles of intellectual & social activity that surround them. Second, I was hoping to nudge along other poets into doing something of the same thing … on the general theory that I learn as much or more from reading as I can from writing.

Art of Speed

Posted

July 21, 2004

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The Art of Speed has run its course. In the blink-and-miss world of hit-and-run publishing, this fly-by-night commercial blog by Nike has already done what it came to do.

Luckily, you can still read what’s there, if you’re interested. It doesn’t really need to be something you get on-the-fly. (ok i’ll quit with the hypens)

What IS Art of Speed? Take it from the horse’s mouth:

For Art of Speed, Nike commissioned 15 talented young filmmakers to interpret the idea of speed. Over the course of 20 days, this weblog will introduce these innovative directors, their short films, and the digital technology behind the scenes.

Kinds of Journals

Posted

July 20, 2004

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These are my notes on a variety of different ways to keep a journal. I am interested in these things because I am looking to develop as a writer. You could liken these things to the push ups that sports players do… They are not the thing that the crowd pays to see, but they probably help make the game worth the ticket price. For me, college has been a whole lot of lessons on the rules of the game, and not very many push ups. This is not to say that those lessons were not as challenging, or as much exercise as the push ups, but, they are different. I’m looking at these journaling methods as a way to get the exercise I need.

I’ll summarize this whole post this way: I have discovered a few different kinds of journals:

I would like to think of myself as a journalist, in a very literal sense of the word, as someone who keeps a journal. Or perhaps I mean a very literal correspondent although I don’t write as many letters as I would like. For the next little while I’m going to keep my eyes open for ideas about ways to journal, and then, when I have satisfied that curiosity, I’ll look into different ways to carry on correspondence.

Morning Pages

I read a book that my sister gave me for a high school graduation present. That book changed my life forever. I know, that sounds really hokey, and it will sound so all the more once I tell you that it was pretty much a self-help book. The book was “The Artist’s Way at Work.” http://www.artistswayatwork.com/ My sister had said I should read it while I was still young and impressionable, and it really did make a difference. In it I learned about something called Morning Pages.

Put simply, the morning pages are three pages of longhand writing, strictly stream of consciousness. You might also think of them as “brain drain,” since one of their functions is to help clear your mind. In order to retrieve your creativity, you need to find it. This can happen through a process of writing daily “morning pages.” There is no wrong way to do morning pages. These are not meant to be art. Or even writing. Nothing is too petty, too silly, too stupid, or too weird to be included. All the details, whining, and worries that you write about in the morning stand between you and your creativity. Just as they’re not really intended to be “Writing,” they also aren’t so much intended to be read. . . . If you can’t think of something, then write, “I can’t think of something to write,” over and over until you’ve filled three pages. Morning pages are nonnegotiable. Never skip or skimp on morning pages. You don’t have to be in the mood to write. The morning pages will teach you to stop judging the words and just let yourself write.

summarized from the book.

I tried doing this, and for years, especially at first, the practice made a colossal difference in my life. Now, I have let that practice fall by the wayside, initially for really ridiculous reasons and now the habit is gone. I’ve concluded that if I know it would help to do it, then I should do it.

Now I can think of a variety of different other kinds of journals. For example

A travel diary or a Captain’s Log
A lab book
A sketch book

Now these first two ways of keeping journals have received some special attention that I have noticed, while doing some of my work. A travel diary, for example, is a kind of mapmaking, in a way.

Another kind of mapmaking journal is detailed in the book “How to Make a Complete Map of Every Thought you Think” ( read a summary ). I wonder if this isn?t something like the process that created Ulysses.

That brings up an interesting point. Not too many people like to read Ulysses. It’s one of those books that people just pretend to have read. Certainly no one wants to read a map of somebody’s thoughts, or a catalog of their morning grogginess. You could liken these things to the push ups that sports players do…

Another, perhaps more utilitarian way of keeping a journal is to keep what I have learned is called a Focus Journal.

Here are the highlights of everything that makes up a Focus Journal

The journal is for a purpose. Here’s what you do:

  • Keep track of progress towards some aim. Monitor your focus, monitor your results.
  • Write objects of fixation for reflection.Write clearly.
  • Don’t keep anything that has low InformationDensity.
  • Don’t keep anything that distracts the attention. No “LabNotes“- lengthy notes on projects, details.
  • No DailyToDoLists


Sketchbooks

I would like to conclude by recounting an apocryphal story about Pablo Picasso. I hear this from my Father, who is an art professor, but he tells me a lot of things for rhetorical purposes, or for his own amusement that may or may not be literally true. I tried to check on this story, but I couldn’t find anything out there about it. I’m told that when Pablo was a child, his father, (also an art teacher) would sit little Pablo down in front of some shoes “draw your shoes” and that Pablo would draw his shoes every morning, over and over, from many angles, just to stay in shape.

The practice reminds me of the Morning Pages, but I think the experience of reading something like this comes closer to being enjoyable than any of the other methods I have described. I can’t tell you how many galleries I’ve been to where there were pictures of, references to, or actual copies of the famous artist’s sketches. People love to see that stuff. Its part of the art. Similarly, people really seem to enjoy photo blogs. Might I be able to create something that provides a similar experience? Could I do it with words instead of pictures — without being as monotonous as a stack of shoes?

I don’t think it would be that difficult to emulate what even a child could do. Just put something into your attention, and consider it.

The Boston Weblogger Meetup

Posted

July 19, 2004

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Well, I’ve been invited so I guess I’ll attend The Boston Weblogger Meetup on Wednesday, July 21st.

They’ve got this funny little thing called meetup.com, which is a lot like evite.com, and it manages the RSVPs. kinda cool. I don’t have any idea what to expect with a bloggers meetup, but hey, I’m a stranger in this city so I’ll do what I can to make some new friends.

creative problem continued

Posted

July 18, 2004

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Several days ago, I posted some sloppy notes about the craft involved with the management of a project like this website. I have since recieved some comments. One of the comments, I deleted. It said: “have you considered therapy,” which I take to mean that my post must ahve appeared very scatterbrained or perhaps a bit on the neurotic side. Given that I actually am in therapy, I chose to disregard the comment as irrelevant. If you are annoyed by reading the random notes of a kooky writer, then don’t read them. Furthermore, if you’re not all that interested in nuts-and-bolts thinking about this kind of thing, you should probably skip this post. It promises to be a long one, and I need to do it, to lay the thoughts out. I know, I’m sorry, you’re accustomed to short and sweet stuff… well you can’t always get that from me.

I would prefer to address one of the more constructive comments, which gave me some pointers on how to address the question of how best to manage things written electronically:

  1. The best way for a writer to go is to team up with an information architect / graphic designer.

    2. Well, I really wish I could do that.

    1. Information Architecture

      2. As for teaming up with a Web guru… well, I work with several of them at the moment. The company I am interning for, Eastgate, is responsible for a little wonder called Tinderbox. Unfortunately, it is only available for the Macintosh at the moment, and so I only use it for work. I think I could probably manage a way to use Tinderbox in a way that gives me thinking control over how my ideas are arranged, stored and presented, and without wasting a ton of my time with technical tinkering.

      I have a short and sweet list of architectural needs for my writing project(s), but I won’t detail them here. You can see my earlier post for the rough sketch of that list.

    2. Design

      3. It probably would be great if I could team up with a graphic designer. I have for some time thought that it might be nice to do that. If I had a designer friend who needed the exposure, they could use my site to show off what a design like theirs can do. Just as my work can showcase their design, the reverse would also be true, so the teaming up would be mutually beneficial. Unfortunately, I don’t know any designers, not any that need the exposure anyway. I have one friend who has an estabolished portfolio, and that’s it. I have posted a request on Craigslist for anyone who fits the bill, but the responses contain links to sites that aren’t very impressive, for the most part.

    Perhpas I should spend a paragraph on the kind of design that I do like. I like minimal. I was raised Quaker. I’ve studied Zen. What more can I say? I ahve noticed though, that minimal comes in two flavors: gross and deliscious. I am actually looking for something that is a good comprimise between the two.

    the gross flavor of design

    By “gross” I mean that it looks that way. It looks crude. I don’t want to spend very much time thinking or writing about design, and that’s part of my point. The nice thing about “the gross flavor” is that it doesn’t waste any time. It gets right down to the content.

    Well, I don’t mind taking some time out to think up a template before getting down to the content, and I have some thoughts on how it should look. Maybe I want to have my cake and eat it too, but I want a template that doesn’t look like one. You know what I’m talking about. You know a template when you see one in action.

    That said, there are certain things that tend to go in certain places; that is fine, proveded they are still interesting to see. I have two examples of minimal designs that I really like: MoCoLoCo, 37signals, digital web magazine and Gizmodo I like the first one best.

  2. planning sequence

    3. It is getting late, and I am gedtting sleepy. There’s a big week ahead of me and I want to do things right, so I am only going to summarize the rest and come back to it probably tomorrow night or so. This summary is taken from the comment I recieved. Granted, this is all about a “web site” and I am much more interested in my body of work as a writer, but I think I can find a useful harmony between the two things.

    What’s the purpose of your Web site? What are you trying to accomplish? What will a site visitor get out of it? Do you really need a Web site in the first place? Does the world need your Web site when it already has so many? And if you don’t like the answers you give yourself the first time, is there an angle on the problem that will change those answers to something you like better?

    The usual planning sequence for a Web project is:

  1. Define your objective and figure out how to tell if you’re succeeding, failing, or moving from one state to the other.
  2. Figure out the first thing you need to get working that will make the site worthwhile on its own.
  3. Do that first thing and measure the results. Did you achieve what you set out to achieve? How do you know, one way or the other?
  4. If Step (3) doesn’t work, decide whether to (a) fix the problem, or (b) scrap the effort. Decide how to decide in advance.
  5. If Step (3) works, think about what you can do next that stands on its own, but also contributes synergistically to the whole. Repeat the cycle.

next:: I’ll go through that planning sequence and think of what to do with this whole thing.

Enabling Inhibitions that Enable

Posted

July 18, 2004

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I just got off the phone with my Dad — can that man ever talk! Don’t get me wrong its not like the annoying parent phone calls you see in the movie where the poor protaginist sighs and says “oh brother” ACtually I prefer talking to my Dad over almost anyone else.

He says, among dozens of other things, that it was always delightful to have a stray literature student in his Aesthetics class. I responded by saying that in my experience far too many students respond to a text more like a lawyer than the approach you’d get in an aesthetics class.

And so I did some crawling… I wondered what there was, out there, that might approximate for me the experience of being the lucky lit. student in an aesthetics class, aside from a conversation with the father I’m fortunate to have, I mean.

It turns out that something like what I was looking for was posted on one of my regular haunts: Grand Text Auto. The Post was called Oulipolooza. A name which made absolutely no sense to me.

I found the answer by following the first link to MadInkBeard (a term that still baffles me). MadInkBeard describes its own origins as being influenced by:

… the (mostly French) group called the Oulipo (Ouvroir de Litterature Potentielle)… . To put it as succinctly as possible the idea of the group is to create new forms of literature for the possible use of other writers. It’s not about creating new literature qua literature, but about creating forms for new literature. Now using the words “form” is pretty damn open… Basically, the Oulipian concept involves “constraint”, voluntarily chosen rules which affect the process of writing (such as writing a novel without the letter ‘e’ (Perec’s La disparition a.k.a. A Void) or writing a book whose structure is based on the drawing of a sequence of tarot cards (Calvino’s Castle of Crossed Destiny (sorry, the Italian escapes me)), in many Oulipian constraints this involves starting with a base text that is then transformed through constraints.

This is all so new to me, and yet it feels familiar. I think that the creative process, in that it involves a distinction between what I want to make and what I do not want to make, has to do with these “constraints.” I think they are silly, the constraints given as examples here, but there is probably some value to it.

The Grand Text Auto post also led to some intersting experiments with this kind of “limitation.” One is called, appropriately enough: Endless Limitations. It says its purpose is: “to offer ways in which limitations and constraints can be imposed upon a task (writing a poem, painting a picture, composing a piece of music) which prevent self consciousness and allow creativity to flourish” because, and I also quote:

self consciousness is, by definition, inhibiting.

Also, the post turned me on to Constrained.org which is something like {fray} except that it employs these new methods.

Amazon.com: What is a Plog?

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July 18, 2004

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I’m not even sure where I want to begin with this. Is it silly that Amazon is drawing this rediculous name-dropping attentionto what is essentailly the same old marketing? Is this the beginning of the blog-trend-gone crazy? Why can’t we simply understand that an electronic document is an updatable one, and get on with our lives?! And, for god’s sakeAmazon.com: What is a Plog?

according to Amazon:

The Plog™ Service is a personalized blog. Your Amazon.com Plog is a diary of events that will enhance your shopping experience, helping you discover products that have just been released, track changes to your orders, and many other things. Just like a blog, your Plog is sorted in reverse chronological order. When we think we have something interesting or important to tell you, we’ll post it to your Plog.

Look! Pictures!

Posted

July 17, 2004

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I have lots of friends! Here’s most of “my people” back home:


Photograph by Dylan Kinnett

My friend Kyle (below, left) has sent me a much-needed update to my collection of pictures of my friends. Here she is with Luke and Chris near the end of the festifities that marked her going away for school.


Photograph by Dylan Kinnett

Next, here’s a picture of Jason, chillin’ at the Mecklenburg. Its nice to have a picture of him from this decade. Jason’s one of the oldest friends I’ve got. He’s also one of my most long-standing friends.


Photograph by Dylan Kinnett


Photograph by Dylan Kinnett

and this is Anna.

Shortly after Kyle met me online to share pictures, we ran into Lars, who is still back home in Shepherdstown. We built a little chat room and all of a sudden we had a little party going. It was fun to sit around, heckle movies, and trade pictures of our friends… and all while we were all so far apart: Lars in West Virginia, Kyle in South Carolina, and me in Massachusets. Here’s a picture of Lars:


Photograph by Dylan Kinnett

Kyle wasn’ttoo flattered by that previously posted photo of her, and so she sent along this very charming picture of her and Tex. They make for a cute couple, don’t you think?


Photograph by Dylan Kinnett

Here’s a good one of just Tex.


Photograph by Dylan Kinnett

But lest you think its all pristine smiles, suits and ties in the world where I’m from, let me introduce to you, the three sage old philosopher kings.


Photograph by Dylan Kinnett

website update

Posted

July 17, 2004

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Not quite one week after I penned “This is not your television” in an attempt to escape the confines of my visual obessions, I’m at it again.

I read a book last weekend, and it taught me some things. For my work at Eastgate, Mark suggested that I use “A List Apart”‘s reseources to surmount a difficulty I was having with a design, and I have finally managed to tackle the learning curve it took to get to where I can easily use Dreamweaver, a copy of which i scored for my birthday this week.

All this means that I had to postpone my abstenance from design here on my homepage, but I think the results will be much more tolerable in the months and years to come. (CSS fixes easy).

I have made some design friends who supposedly have agreed to scratch my back while i scratch theirs, that is, to trade a design for mutual publicity. We’ll see if that works.

But yeah, that’s it. I’m done. My spare time this coming week will be devoted to things that do not involve monitors and mice, and from now on I don’t want to do any design for fun. I only have so much time for fun and I want to spend that time on my writing.

Speaking of writing, I ahve uploaded an updated list of my poems, essays, and short stories. You can expect that list to grow and develop in the near future. stay tuned…

NEWS FLASH::

The offer still stands: a free gmail.com mail account in return for a useable suggestion for a new name for my homepage! Contact me or post a reply to this post for more details.

My Cambridge Apartment

Posted

July 17, 2004

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These are the photographs of my apartment.

A few months ago, after securing my practicum job in the Boston area, I thought, “well that’s just great!” – which I meant as honestly and also as sarcastically as can be imaginied. Of course its great, in that it is a stellar opportunity for me to do something other than school for once in my life. On the other hand, Boston is a very expensive city, and I am a very poor person. I live on Ramen Noodles and college-student ingenuity. Honestly, I wonder how I survive.

from the email introducing the palce to me

This room is in a 4-bedroom apartment, which located very close to Kendall Square red line station(5 mins walking), it is about two stops away from harvard and 2 stops away from Downtown Boston. All the roommates are graduate students, I am Ph. D student at Tufts, one is Harvard student, and another is Umass student, he does not show up alot in this apartment, so usally there only are 3 guys living here. We are clean and quiet, and very friendly to people

When Seams Fall Apart

Posted

July 16, 2004

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Game Studies – When Seams Fall Apart – Video Game Space and the Player

“Much of the current critical and theoretical literature on new media, including video and computer games, assumes both the conceptual transparency of the video or computer screen and the absolute authority of a rational scientific order

um… much of it also presumes a comfortablitiy with PhD level jargon. Anyway, I thought this article was insightful, if a little difficult to read.

Roan away from home

Posted

July 15, 2004

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My Friend Lars is in a band calledRoan Caliban

Tactic/Belief

Posted

July 13, 2004

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"The great conflict of the 21st century will not be between the West and terrorism. Terrorism is a tactic, not a belief. The true battle will be between modern civilization and anti-modernists; between those who believe in the primacy of the individual and those who believe that human beings owe their allegiance and identity to a higher authority; between those who give priority to life in this world and those who believe that human life is mere preparation for an existence beyond life; between those who believe in science, reason, and logic and those who believe that truth is revealed through Scripture and religious dogma. Terrorism will disrupt and destroy lives. But terrorism itself is not the greatest danger we face."

– Robert Reich, in The American Prospect

Mark Bernstein posted this quote without commentary on his blog, which leaves me to wonder about his opinion of it. My opinion of it is that it is wrong. well, ok, erroneous. First of all, I see no need to define a “great conflict” for a whole century, and certainly not one that is construcetd around a binary opposition: West/Terrorism, Tactic/Belief, modern/anti-modernism … and while we’re at it, lets talk about this anti-modernism. While it is true that the majority of the anti-modernists in the world do still subscribe to a world view that does not seperate chuch and state the way that most modern systems do, I don’t think it’s a very safe assumption to equate the two philosophies. There are a whole lot of voters and taxpayers out there doing everything with their lives to support the engine of modernity, and those moderns are also people "who believe that human life is mere preparation for an existence beyond life" In fact, that might be the very thing that got them to sell their souls for fast food in the first place. Who needs an ozone layer? I’m going to die and go to heaven before it’s gone, anyway! Extinction! Not my problem. That’s in God’s hands. I think we’ve got people on both sides over the battle for modernity, and both sides are fighting for "god and country."

Just a thought. I hope that reverend Joe reads this and adds a comment or two. I’m curious what he will make of this.

Reports From The Front

Posted

July 13, 2004

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At work there is this project. I don’t think I’m at liberty to be too specific about it, because I wouldn’t want to let the cat out of the bag, but I think I can get away with revealing that it involves a certain amount of creativity on my part, and on the part of everyone in the company. Can I just say how exciting it is to be professionally creative! I like about it that there is the group dynamic, like the one I have grown to love in the theater. I like about it that, also like the theater, there is a sense of urgency, to get the thing done in time to show it to all the peoploe out there. I think that these things really help to get the creative spark to become a real flame. Many of my attempts at independent creative group projects have ended in miserable failure. It is nice that, in a professional context, things really seem to get off the ground, which is a pleasant change from what I am accustomed to. I’m delighted!

Part of my contribution to this project is design-realted. I do have a passion for design, and I certainly enjoy being able to do that in a professional context as well. Since I am learning things in that area, the thrill of learning has drowned out the tedium expereinced by some other people during a design such as this one, and so I get to be the one who is happy to bear that workload.

Eastgate is, after all, a publisher of interactive fiction, and so I have attended a few meetings recently where the main topic of discussion has been story. Now, a buisiness meeting about character and plot is a very different thing from a lit-class discussion of things like character and plot. It is interesting, and actually refreshing, to have conversations like these in a decisive context. After years of humanities courses the ‘It Depends’ can really start to grate on the nerves. Yes, of course it has its value and its place, but it isn’t worth everything and it shouldn’t be everywhere.

Elin

Meet Elin. In a previous post about my workplace I described my boss, Mark in terms that recalled ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ likening him to the man behind the curtain. I did this in a caption, after a picture that was taken on a day when Elin was not in the office, and so there was no photograph of my office-mate, and no descriptive caption about her. She complained somewhat, wondering if I had forgotten to say anything nice about her for any particular reason. And so, without further ado, and with all due flattery, I bring you Elin. Elin, to continue the Oz metaphor, is Glenda the Good, armed with an inexhaustable well of creative ideas and practical whimsy. To abandon the Oz metaphor, she is one of the big-shots around here, enough so much that she need only drop her own name in connection with the publication TEKKA, in order to secure big-shot press passes the high tech and kinda-prestigious Mac World Expo.

Elin is a well-equipped contemporary writer, with her web log, entitled ‘Bloggerdydoc‘ (she seems to have an affinity for this kind of wordplay, and has a pseudonym ‘spiffy the poet’). It is a better read than my own blog, and so it is a source of encouragement for me, the younger writer.

I don’t mean to prattle on about a bunch of people that my readers have never, and may never meet, except to say that it is quite refreshing, for once, to have a group of co-workers that I enjoy. No more faux-corperate restaurant managers breathing fire up my butt! No more petty telemarketing competition-scheme dramas! There are only people who, I hope, I can consider my peers. (hm, so THAT’S what college is for’)

My 24th Birthday

Posted

July 13, 2004

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On July Eleventh, I had my twenty-fourth birthday. I hesitate to day that I “celebrated” said birthday, as a few of the typical celebratory rituals were conspicuously absent this year. One thing that never materialized was the Collins-Style Official Beat which I was threatened with by Luke (of the aforementioned Collins” “clan”), who is one of my very best friends and who, on the occasion of his birthday a couple months ago, received a boot to the head, just a little too squarely, thanks to yours truly. My birthday was also missing much of the manic reveling that tends to mark the occasion, but I suppose that is to be expected in a city full of strangers.

Walden Pond

I was not entirely alone for my birthday. Chris Dunkel called me up and suggested we go out for the “best burger in boston” and also for a quick jaunt out to Walden Pond. I had been spoiled by my experience with the Hawthorne house” the famous cabin in the woods was a little bit anti-climactic. There as no tour guide, and no famous cabin, either, only a set of cornerstones, and a pile of memorial boulders. I wish I had gotten up earlier in the day and worn my hiking shoes in order to get the full experience from the place, but it was pretty to see all of the natural scenery, and the bathing suits too. There are a lot of beach-goers who have populated the once private and unrecognized localle.

Kings Bowling

Another friend, Liz, joined us alter in the evening for a round of bowling. Now, I”ve had a variety of bowling experiences in my life, and I thought that nothing could surprise me about a bowling alley. In West Virginia, a bowling alley resembles the bathroom in a truck stop in many respects: the smoke, the clientele, the body language” you get the point. In Japan, on the other hand, bowling is another matter altogether. Someone in Japan must have taken a cultural interest in bowling once upon a time, and they must have done their research on it. Consequently, everything about bowling in Japan usually resembles the Ancient Western World, by which I don’t mean a saloon. I mean columns and Greco-roman bleach-white figures, and the only exposed genetalia actually do qualify as artistic expression. Now, the bowling experience I had in Boston is a perfect harmony of these two extremes. The place seems like something out of LasVegas. It is pristine, but cool, black-lit, with disco, plenty of drinking to be had, but none of the smoke. The place managed to have some attitude to it, without being crass. Well, I managed to be a little crass. Liz wasn’t allowed to bring her bottle of water into the establishment; “No beverage containers are allowed,” he boomed, and before I could even criticize the bouncer for his failure as a citizen to act in civil disobedience against an obviously irrational standard he said: “It’s not our rule. It’s a state law.” I said: “I have water in my stomach. Is that illegal too?”

Overall, it was a very happy birthday. This promises to be a very big year of my life, with graduation around the corner, plenty of moving around I’m sure, bills to pay, people to meet. It strange, during my last birthday I was still recovering from a serious down-turn in my life. I wondered if I would ever meet my goal of a novel before the age of twenty-six, and now, that goal is already met, a few years early. The goal of graduation is also about to be met. Now what? Another novel? Another play? Another adventure? Who knows!

Macworld Expo

Posted

July 12, 2004

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I’m doing the “blogging live!” thing, which is humorous considering my opinion of live reporting: so often it is completely superfluous! anyway, here I am at the MacWorld Expo in Boston, where I will be learning about new technologies for interactive media and design. The afternoon should be paccked full of conferences and seminars, which we are graciously allowed to attend on account of our affiliation with TEKKA magazine — hooray for press passes!

It was some trouble getting here, what with traffic, getting only a little turned around, and then waiting for the also completely superflous shuttle bus from the parking lot to the palce across the street from the parkinglot… the registration computers didn’t work so well, the food court cash register computers crashed while i was waiting for lunch… and so at this conference the computers are 1 for 3. the lounge computers work well enough so that I can report this.

The Space Between Pages

Posted

July 10, 2004

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My Creative Problem

I always thought it would be easy to have my very own Website. I thought, gee wow, now I can write whatever I want and have it right up there for all to see, my very own “writing on the wall” I get to be William Blake when I grow up, passing out my work however I wish… and all at the push of a little button. Yay! desktop publishing, information superhighway, blah blah blah…

It isn’t that easy. The first difficulty I have encountered is that I can think of what I would like my “book” to be, but I cannot make it. If I really were more like William Blake I’d have a press in my basement. If I could picture a book of a certain size, I would cut the paper to a certain size. If I wanted certain pictures, I would draw them. I would ink the plates myself, print with them, etc. well, I don’t have a press in my basement; I have a laptop on my bed. Things are a little different. It’s as if the press is too new. The thing I am to use to make my book is not so self- explanitory as a physical object, and it relies on code, which can be… counterintuitive, to say the least. I get confused in the space between what I can think of and what I can bring into being. For this reason, I thought I would take a moment to talk about that space, and my frustration with it.

The Raw Materials

What kind of thing am I writing anyway? The big trend these days is to call it a “blog.” If I’m lucky, some of my readers won’t even have heard that silly sounding term: Blog-short-for-”web-log.” The electronic journal is just one more step in the right direction, toward a pushbutton press… but it has already taken on some genre qualities that make it different from what I want to do. There are the superficial qualities, which are really the only things that separate the thing from a conventional diary, and then there is the one big quality that a web blog site seems to have: it takes over. It becomes all that there is to say, and pretends to be the best way to say anything. Its as if, if we would write in this new way, we would write like Anne Frank — The way she wrote, in stolen moments, in a diary – it can’t be the end all and be all of writing., and perhaps even she would have gone on to put her observations in another form, an even more powerfully captivating one. This newer kind of writing is both melleable and instantaneous. I prefer the former to that later, and this is where I differ.

For a writer, the journal is only a part of the art. There are several different kinds of things that I write, and all that I really want for them is a place to keep them all together, and a way to put them there as easily as is absolutely possible. At first this might not seem like too tall an order, but, in a moment, I describe things that I want to be able to do with them that I am not able to do. I am writing these thoughts out for two reasons: to think the problem through carefully in order that it might be solved carefully, and in case anyone else out there might be able to help or sympathesize.

Here is a map of my “whole journal”

  • The things that I have written:
  • Poems
  • Short Stories
  • Essays
  • A Play
  • A Zine
  • A Journal
  • General Observations
  • Research Notes
  • A Thesis
  • A Hypertext/Novella
  • A Newspaper Column
  • Accounts of my travels
There are other things, too. I don’t think of them as “writings” but perhaps I should start…
Emails
Letters

There are lots of writers who save their letters, and I am one of them. However, about a year ago, I had all my emails deleted. Years of correspondence disappeared. I’d like a “backup”to guard against this. Now, letters are personal things, so perhaps I want to be the only one who can get at them. Perhaps I don’t even want them to be online, but so far as I am concerned, they are also a part of my whole journal. I want it all in one place.

In that vein, I might also like to have:
Instant Messages
Comments on blogposts
Discussion Board Contributions

Imagined Possibilities

Now, as soon as I start to think about putting this stuff in an electronic format, I start to think about some redundancies. I can think of two redundancies, appropriately enough.

The first redundancy is that certain things are like the others. For example, research notes, general observations, and a journal: these are essentially just your average web log. They are only categories of the same thing. ‘Nuff said.

The second redundancy is: once things are arranged online, certain things might end up appearing in the same place at the same time. What I mean becomes apparent once you start making that list above into the map of a website.

For simplicity’s sake, lets say there are three directories that contain my writing:
/prose/
/verse/
/journal/

these directories have contents, of course:

    /verse/

  1. index
  2. poem
  3. poem
    /prose/

  1. index
  2. essay
  3. story

/journal/ 7. weblog

I want to be able to do “magic” things with my new kind of book. If I write on page four that I have just added a new “rant” to go along with the stories and the essays, I would like that writing to magically, also appear on page seven, which is my journal. Also, I would like my writing about that new rant to serve as an incantation, of sorts. Obviously, a rant is unlike a story, or a letter to the editor or whatever, and perhaps it is unique enough to deserve its own “section” with the “chapter” that is full of prose.

There, that little bit of magic, that one little imaginary paragraph that I wrote on a hypothetical page four… I described it in one paragraph. Now, does it really have to take hours and hours of my time in order to make it happen? This stuff is supposed to happen at the push of a button, but, in my experience, it has been more like the push of a button, the scroll of a menu, the correction of an improper command, the purchase of a manual, and the waste of a weekend that I would rather spend writing. Can’t I have it so that “it just works!”

My (vague) Ideal Solution

I don’t want to spend my time building a printing press in my basement! I want to hand interesting books to my friends! And that brings me back to the idea of William Blake again. He wasn’t just someone who made his own books. If it were just that quality about him that I wish to evoke I would have defered to the term “self-publishing”.

Another reason I picked him as my model is that he made his books with a certain appearance. He illustrated them the way he saw fit, with colors and drawings and typefaces of his choosing, and every copy of every book was unique in its own way. That’s beautiful!

Why can’t I have that! I want to focus on what my book looks like. I do not want to focus on learning a new mathematical kind of language, one which represents a visual way of things… I’m a verbal person dammit!

I guess what I am asking for is more “magic.” I want to say: “make it blue” and have it be blue. I want to draw it and have it be there, just the way I can write it and have it there.

Sadly, this second kind of magic is one that I am definitely going to have to wait for. Instant publication, built-in redundancy creation and control, automatic categories… these things can probably be done for me with existing technology, if only I had it at my fingertips. As for design considerations… I am so tired of trying to do that work myself that I am willing to comprimise total creative control for a whole lot of help.

And, speaking of a whole lot of help… That’s why I am writing this. I am hoping that maybe there are some friends out there who can help me build a press in my basement, so to speak. I know that there are lots of technical aspects to the nature and solution of my creative problem, but I have deliberately avoided them here, on the off chance that someone out there who is less technically inclined might be more able to sympathize with me.

Stray ideas

backup….

I said before that electronic text is malleable and that I enjoy this quality. On the other hand, I hate it. I’ve had too many school projects dissappear at the flick of an electron, and I have seen everything I have ever written go dark, most of it lost forever. For this reason, I will never entirely entrust my whole journal to the internet. I do love the ability to change, rearrange, etc. in quick easy ways, but I would like an archive, too. I don’t even trust CDs. They will probably become obsolete within my lifetime, or soon thereafter. Once a year, or so, I want to be able to print my work for the year, and store it in a nice box somewhere. It would help me sleep at night. I’ll print to paper, and I’ll “print” to a CD an electronic version of the state of the thing at that time. So, this thing that I’m building, it must be built for that.

full-stop

as a related note… I wrote this document in Microsoft Word. Now, if I were printing this document and passing it out to my friends, it really would be that easy. And I would have gloriously simple spell-checking bad-grammar underlining and formatting controls to help me get the document to be the way I want it to be. However, when i want to “print” to my webpage, there is a whole can of worms that open up… “Save As…” even to the sparse html … its a shitty feature! the html is terrible! All I want is for my “Heading One” text to become a level one heading , for my paragraps to become proper html paragraphs, and for my lists to be lists. Is that too much to ask for!

I can’t even talk about my frustrations without encountering them! (i suppose its also too much to ask for that i be able to retain the links to these footnotes.) related: Word Processors: Stupid and Inefficient

Siblings

Posted

July 8, 2004

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I?ve told this story a few times lately. My sister called me the other day. The story usually stops right there. Your sister, I didn?t know you had a sister. Suddenly, the subject becomes my sister: how old is your sister? How old are you by the way. I am a visiting alien in this city. Nobody knows me but superficially, but somehow I just don?t seem like the kind of guy who has a sister. Oh, she?s seven years older than you are, I understand. And she has a baby, how cute! And how old is the baby? In fact, in several other conversations, the question has come up: do you have any siblings? That?s what I?m trying to talk about.

She?s actually my half sister. We grew up together, during the early part of our childhood. I don?t remember much of that. I do remember she tried to kill me. I also remember she was my fierce protector, and that I was afraid of everything, and that, mostly, I wasn?t paying attention. Sooner or later, she disappeared to live with her father, whoever he was, wherever that may be, and I thought I would never see my sister again. I went through the rest of my childhood without any siblings.

I?m talking about my older half sister who is seven years apart from me. I have a younger one as well.

My sister called me the other day. She?s been calling me once in a while since I was sixteen. ?It?s about our brother,? she says. Somehow, I hadn?t thought of myself as the kind of person who has a brother. In fact, I never knew. Sure, there had been vague intimations about there being another one of us out there. No one knew where he was, or who he was, and if they did, I wasn?t told. So much has been kept from me, for ?protection.? This brother I have had hinted to me, I always thought he was the oldest. In fact, he is only four years older than I am. He is a writer. He lives in Georgia. He has a name, a face, a personality, a wife, and a story to tell. My sister tracked him down.

My sister called me the other day to tell me I have a brother, a brother I never knew I had. My brother seems to be like me.

To put it lightly, he was adopted by his grandmother as a young baby. To put it vaguely, he doesn?t know what his mother looks like. To put it in my sister?s words ?he never missed much, not having had that mother of ours.? To put it in my words, well, I?m trying. I also went through a certain lonely euphemism as a child, although I was old enough to have some sense of it. I do remember what our mother looked like when I was very young. In fact, she was present for my first memory, and conspicuously absent thereafter. I had always felt alone in this. Now, I feel worse, for all the self-pity, what when there was someone else out there who had it worse, and from the same mother. On the other hand, it doesn?t make me feel much better to know that I was the victim of a mistake never learned from. Someone told me once, ?Insanity is repeating the same action while expecting different results? One might wonder, then, if my brother and I qualify as different results. I get the feeling that story will be one to take time for in the telling.

the first cartoon

Posted

July 8, 2004

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Home Page: American Memory from the Library of Congress

American Memory is a gateway to rich primary source materials relating to the history and culture of the United States. The site offers more than 7 million digital items from more than 100 historical collections

Check this out. It is the first animated film ever made. It was created by Thomas Edison.

http://memory.loc.gov/mbrs/animp/1592.mpg

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