I thought I’d write another post about blogging, check how that Blogging Manifesto of mine was coming along (had I stuck to my ideology? or did i abandon it, swayed by worldly pleasures?). So far I’ve delivered about one of each of the following: CD review, book review, gig review and movie reviews. (A mixed bag, one of everything, to start off with). The only real technology I’ve utilised is Youtube (to give a preview of a movie) and uploading photos; but I think the real advantage of blogging that has jumped out at me is the ability to share, to publish my views.
While writing the review for Turing’s Delirium (a book that I had read some time back), I searched up some other reviews (one from the Sydney Morning Herald and another from the New York Times) just to remind myself of what happened in the book and what sort of issues were raised (no plagarism, I swear!). It struck me that a very good aspect of the internet and blogging was that a person like me could share my opinions on books and films and that people might happen to read it; whereas there would be no way in hell that would be accepted as a piece of literary criticism in one of the major aforementioned newspapers.
Ditto the photos that I uploaded of two gigs: a smaller one (a gypsy rock band in a Brunswick St bar) and a larger one (an internationally-recognized band playing in a large concert venue). Whereas in the past it would be easy to find press photos of famous bands, promotional shots, live photos taken by professionals with massive lenses standing a matter of feet from the bands; it would not be considered worthwhile to publish, say, the photography of a person standing in Row S, taking pictures with a mid-range still camera. But now, and with almost no cost, my amateur photography is available to see, irrelevant to most; but perhaps interesting to friends– or at least an interesting personal perspective.
So I’ve done that so far. Still on the list is exploring Melbourne’s fascinating niches (using Flickr or something with geotagging), recording improvisations or jam sessions, political opinions (although I’ll save those for bit… don’t want to put people off too soon!) and some short stories and fiction. So though I haven’t really utilised all the cutting-edge technology or even that which I discussed in the first post, I’ve come to see the value for blogging as a medium of personal expression and publishing.
And finally, it struck me as rather M.C. Escher-esque that I started this blog with a post about blogging, at which point my mother wrote a post about blogging about blogging on her blog; which was then blogged about in another blog (hence the Escher picture at the top of this post). So (correct me if I’m wrong), that would be a blog about a blog about a blog about blogging. Convoluted, no?