The Blog as Art

This blog is not about the middle-class, and it is not about anonymity, either. It deals with observations, as seen from the enclosure of the middle-class, from within its havens of obscurity. Such a position permits the author a freedom and a latitude not enjoyed by those with expensive identities to maintain, or reputations to uphold. After all, unless you learn to swim in absurdity, you will surely drown in it.

Blogging is not for everyone, but it suits particularly those people for whom writing paragraphs comes naturally. Since most ideas can sit inside the boundaries of a paragraph, this includes most of the world's population of literates, and some illiterates as well, now that blogging includes voice and video. Unfortunately it also reveals the contents of people's minds, and the awful insipid emptiness of so many. But that is progress. It must surely be the inadvertent goal of information technology to someday reveal the contents of every mind, whether we like it or not.

I have always wanted to write a book that consisted mainly of paragraphs, each identified only by a number, perhaps a roman numeral. In such books, each paragraph need not pay allegiance to any other, and each has an a equal chance at immortality. You need to write a lot of paragraphs in order to strike the right note, so it's best to play the odds and write books indirectly, as a means of bundling up the paragraphs. Nietsczhe did that, and we are still reading Nietsczhe, and deciphering his eloquence. Eric Hoffer managed it without a formal education. If only these people could have blogged, their blogs would have sparkled like none other and lent authority and gravity to the new medium.

A blog offers a welcome excuse for the lazy author, typically befuddled by inconsistencies, to concatenate a series of paragraphs that under normal circumstances would suggest attention-deficit disorder, or some other form of mild insanity, and call it art.

First Post

When you think about it, the first post in any blog should be something special. It should serve up the irresistible genius of the author, and act as a kind of moral example for the posts that follow it. Besides, with over 100 million blogs online, you really need to say something sharp to get noticed.

But this is a tall order, and one that is rarely executed properly. I recommend getting through it as quickly as possible, with minimal fuss, rather than risk committing the amateur mistake of choosing a definite topic at too early a stage, and allowing it to serve as a statement of introduction to the whole intellect. Such things have a habit of appearing on a person's obituary.

It rained today.