When we were bored in school, Claire and I would doodle. She would doodle a chicken, I doodled a snail. Eventually this evolved into our famous chicken and snail comic strip in which the duo would have fabulous adventures, very very far from our dull comprehensive classroom in leafy Southgate, which roped in as characters anybody we liked at the time - not just boys but also the members of Queen (except for John Deacon, he was too boring) or Led Zeppelin maybe, or bikers on Harley Davidsons, or perhaps Thor the God of Thunder and several Viking berserkers. (We liked long hair at the time.)
She'd draw a speech bubble, I'd draw another one, all under cover of our text books, and thus would the story progress and the boring lesson speed past. Our aim was to make each other laugh (LOL in fact?) though this was precarious, because it would land you in trouble with the teacher, so we'd usually be sniggering away in the corner. (Now I'm a teacher myself I'd like to apologise for how very annoying we must have been, I'd have wanted to slam our heads against the desk repeatedly. Maybe it's karma working itself out.)
Anyway, blogging's like writing notes in class isn't it?
It's hard to explain the appeal to people who don't do it, especially without comparing it with something else. I invite you to tell us what you think blogging is like.
(and while you're at it, read Treespotter's marvellous post on it. 'On the blog, I am a supreme being...')
About teaching and crying
1 day ago
10 comments:
It's also, it occurs to me, like the famous 'man on a stage' effect. Man standing on the ground - gets no attention; man standing on a stage - suddenly 10 times as sexy!
I always thought of it as like going to a pub and rambling to a friend over a pint, but you want all of your friends to hear your druken genius, so you put it online.
Also, much like being in a pub, you feel very foolish when you realize no-one is listening and you're rambling to yourself.
The longer I blog, the more self-conscious I feel about it. And the longer I blog, the more it feels like masturbating in public.
daniel, agreeing with you totally. ever try drunk blogging?
For me, blogging replaces the "water-cooler" chat I imagine I'd take part in at work if I didn't work for such a small firm and my desk wasn't on a different floor to everybody else's.
Although I'm always pleased to receive comments from other bloggers, the thought of my non-blogging real life friends and acquaintances reading what I've written fills me with horror. My dad asked for my blog details the other day!! Curiously though, this feeling of horror doesn't extend to those bloggers whom I've met in real life.
I started doing it because no one was paying me to write about Berlin and I desperately wanted to get my thoughts down somewhere. Then a bunch of new friends showed up and now it's company for someone who works from home.
And the only creative writing practice I have. And a source of work, too, on occasion.
You used to have to form a band or write a book and send it off to a publisher or write for the NME or streak or get very, very drunk and stand outside Iceland shouting if you wanted to rage against the world.
You can still do all of those things, of course.
But a blog's much easier.
(And compared to standing outside Iceland and the streaking, much, much drier...)
Bob
Daniel - right, it's a wonder people keep going after the first month of posts, muttering away to yourself in cyberspace.
BiB, interesting - I find it's the reverse, getting more shameless at writing any old nonsense and more personal stuff.
Treespotter, never again...
Marsha, me too! Though I love my friends reading, it was odd when they started, as I'd got used to chatting away to virtual strangers.
Bowleserised, I'm envious of you writer types, I'd like to work at home & talk to blog people. I agree with the creative writing bit too - I feel like it was invented for my own personal amusement & pleasure.
Hello, Robert Swipe! *waves* I always wanted to write for the NME but it was FAR TOO COOL. And I probably wasn't angry enough (or enough of a writer, to be fair.) Hurrah for blogs!
PS: Sitemeter is DOWN! It is agony.
'Tis the ultimate freedom of expression irrelevant or how many or little people read it. Cathartic.
Yeah, I think of it as a doodle pad I'm happy for everyone else to see. It's an outlet for my creative urges and my strange need to go "look, look at all this cool stuff! go and enjoy it!". I grew up wanting to be a music hack, but went down the radio route. So this is my outlet for the frustrated music journalist.
I've described it as screaming into the void. But in a displaced way. I don't scream about the things that are bothering me, but more about the things that help me cope.
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