Blogging: Your 15 Minutes of Fame?

I have seen the world in my dreams. From the spires of Angkor Wat, across oceans of color and sound to the waterfalls of Palenque- each place I see has been seen before, by eyes that may or may not be my own. The pilgrimage to stone and star, the chases pursued up stairs of vines and skulls, the glory of creation, the pity of ruin, beheld by the dream breather, weaving the lost with the found. How does one find? How does one make known? What does one make known? In whose name does the remembrance of an anonymous monument become known? The believed or the believer (are they not one themselves)? All the centuries of my life, the answer eldues me; yet for many years I have acquiesced not to ask, and instead dream of travel, and travel to remember the dream...


So, blogging. Who cares? Really, whats the point? For all I know, no one will ever read this, unless maybe I tell them to. For this reason alone the thought never occured to me to make one, even though you hear about them all the time now. So then what does this mean, I only do things for attention/affirmation? Maybe since I don't really read anyone else's blogs, I'm just not in the loop.

Why are they (seemingly) so popular these days? Opinions in general seem like the hott ticket in media- what with the O'Reillys and Hannitys and whoever else having bestsellers in addition to their cable "talk" shows. But even people who aren't all the way in the limelight have them- perhaps in the hopes that it could lead to their celebrity, their chance for syndication? Or maybe people just need things to make them look busy at their computers while they're supposed to be working in their cubicles.

Perhaps with the Internet, as with many other things, the unprecedented access to lives other than our own turns surfing into a search, for people or ideas we have share something in common with (so as to not feel alone), or those we would otherwise not come in contact with. What I find funny/ironic is that the more informative information becomes, the more abstract it also becomes (I guess its not that ironic since whats at issue is ideas). A power outage occurs, and all this "living" disappears.

I just wonder who blogging really serves- the blogger's ego, or people's need to be in touch w/opinions and ideas that otherwise would not be readily available? Is it that on both ends of this communication, there is an active participation in the creation myth of one's persona (real or imagined), the way they would like the rest of the world to see them/seeing them as such? Or is it that just collectively sharing these ideas is a proper vent and creative outlet for both teller and listener, such that it keeps them coming back, and searching for more? Do people take it this seriously?

I'll admit, when I made mine, I couldn't stop looking at it, clicking on the link I had posted to see my stupid little cookie cutter creation come to life. Regardless of whether anyone ever sees it, just making something like a blog can have an empowering effect on people. Is this an example of technology and information becoming truly democratized? Is this the kind of democratization of tech. and info the world really needs, a blog?

What it all comes down to, I think, is the value one places on disclosures of thoughts/feelings/ opinions/observations/whatever for oneself, and the value of the consumption of this sort of communication by society. Juding by a few of the blogs I've perused from this class (and even Prof. Wilson's opinion), that value is kinda low. Sweet. Grocery lists and summaries of last night's class, here I come! Oh, the mask picture above is an Andy Warhol print, from whom I get this title for this little entry, further proving how friggin clever I am, which should be evidently clear if you've made it this far.


And so another sun sets, with the gentle drops from rivers and streams a thousand miles away redistributed to their final resting place on the tongues, brows and bones of weary souls tired from the journey to the edge of the universal mind, all to remember the last time, and prepare for the future nostalgia of lives borrowed and never returned, lives leased and paid with never enough dreams, lives bought and forgotten. Green is the bed of the transcendental sleeper on this first day of the rest of days. May he never wake again to the sound of before.