Wednesday, February 13, 2008

blogging

My friend R. asked me why people blog. This question troubled me since it is akin to asking why people write or, in my case, why I have always been an obsessive story teller in every aspect of my life.
Today on National Public Radio (another obsession of mine) I heard an anthologist who put together excerpts from blogs into a hard copy book talk about the difference between writing in general and blogging. She felt that people who blog have an altogether different attitude toward their writing and their own public lives from that hard copy writers have. To her, people who blog are very courageously putting themselves out there in public, like nudists or the exhibitionists she assumes them to be, while writers on paper are somehow more anonymous and less vulnerable since, presumably, they can craft personae to cover up what is really there.
I don't know about that distinction. It's just that we're more used to writing on paper, and the convention of this kind of writing has us imagine an impregnible barrier between audience and author, who hides from the reader in a Joycean way, "paring his nails." On the other hand, writing on the net is nakedly confessional, quite often. For example, I belong to support groups for parents of children with Tourette Syndrome and related disorders. My son, J., and my father both have these disorders, and my compatriots on tsparents-2@yahoogroups.com and other such groups have been invaluable friends in my struggles to deal with the fallout of these things and the people who have them. But blogs are not quite the same, not necessarily, anyhow.
The more consciously one writes, the less likely s/he is naked in this same way.
My friend and colleague L. has said that she thinks about how she'll explain the events of her life on her blog even as they are unfolding, consciously shaping them and questioning herself about their meaning even as they occur. In that way, writing makes our lives what they are are as well as resulting in concrete evidence of our existence beyond the tax return.
And where does that put "confessional" writers like the poets of the 60s-70s (Plath and Sexton, et al)? I guess we have all decided that this is a pose, like every other, rather than "reality," whatever that is.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your remarks prompt several responses. First, I think that in blog writing, the reader is very clear--or so it is for me. If the reader is not clear for any writer, then that writer must step back and ask herself why she is writing down things at all.

Second, whether or not the confessional writers were posing now seems beside the point. With their topics, they opened up the possibilities for all of us.

I love hearing about yoga, so keep it up!

Robbi N. said...

Point taken. However, the reader is not so clear to me (except that I know my friends will read it, the people to whom I gave the address!). That is because I have not really settled on a particular focus or purpose for my blog. I see some blogs advertise people's books and their upcoming readings. I don't have anything like that at the moment to advertise, except an occasional publication.
Some people's blogs are about their interests or difficulties. I could, if I wished, focus mostly on taking care of my parents, or on Tourette Syndrome, or on yoga, but I don't really want to do that. It's a little bit of everything at the moment. And perhaps vainly, I imagine that someone I don't know will visit the blog and read about my life. That's probably not going to happen, but it's possible.
RE: confessional writers, it's not whether they were consciously posing, it's what constitutes a self at all that I question. I don't mean to say they were phony, and I too am grateful for the expanded topics poetry could cover.