Saturday, January 17, 2009

Aside

My New Year's resolution is to write at least three blog entries a week. I'm trying to get my whole life down, so things may seem a bit shapeless and off-the-cuff. However, this is no apologia. There really is no template in blog-land. Some entries will be more diaristic in form, others will take the shape of a magazine article (some were, in fact, written for publication). I'm not going to get bogged down in a conversation about real writing vs. blog writing, or the exact science of pulling a surfer's eye across a blog page (I can leave this to my marketing director). Any revenues from Ad-sense are simply a welcome by-product.

I did find it a bit sad when an employer told me that the average person's attention span runs a maximum of 400-500 words. Pathetic!! It reminded me of a recent Gore Vidal quote. When asked where are all the good writers, he replied "the question is , where are all the good readers?" Maybe he's "misunderestimating" the American reading public. If not, I'm fucked in that respect.

In any case, it's a moot point because this blog is more of an exercise for me, me, me. Not like a narcissisic form of masturbation. It's a foregone conclusion that all writing is a form of masturbation, yes? For me, this blog thing is more like therapy, a way of working on myself and giving shape, such as it is, to my thoughts and reactions to the world. (OK, I concede: masturbation)

I was reading the journals of Susan Sontag the other day, and it's chock full of genius. I really think this woman had the camp (well, she practically invented the term) psyche of a tortured gay man in the body of an overly intellectual lesbian. Or something like that. It's enough to give one hope for the Sapphic race (and why don't they make gay men like this anymore? That's a whole other article). Anyway, I'll just give you a tantalizing sample, and I paraphrase:

I increasingly think of writing as being directly related to my queerness. I must use my writing as a weapon against the world, as my queerness is the one weapon the world has against me.


Sheer unadulterated genius. Unsentimental yet stingingly true. I don't want to try and put myself in the company of the Divine Miss S -- I am certainly not that arrogant, nor as well-read as she -- but this epigram really hit home for me. Because I feel as if she was getting at the crux of what I am trying to do with words...what I have always striven (strived? strove?) to do, whether it was written down or not. And this here little blog is my way of keeping in practice, and sharpening my own weapon!

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