How we got here, where we go next
For the contents of this post, please go to https://rochereau.wordpress.com/2021/06/19/how-we-got-here-where-we-go-next/
Sunday 24 July 2016
About Me
- Name: Vincent
- Location: High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire (BKM), United Kingdom
Previous Posts
- Brexit dream #3: Sea Slug Soup in Brussels
- A Manhattan Odyssey
- The Cycle of Imperfection
- Brexit dream #2 *: Fair Weather Friend
- Nake Nula Waun Welo
- Something useful in the world
- Beggars and choosers
- The unnamed road
- His face fell
- . . . Until the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse la...
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7 Comments:
B.W. (aka BMW, Bryan) said...
My wife thinks I should start a blog called "The B.M. Movement"; she got a big kick out of that. I told her that that would be a tad redundant, like "ATM machine." I may be bringing back "Strangers Call Me Sunny" after this fall and I'm done with school and not as swamped with schoolwork and other things as I am now. I have it set up at a new address, but there's no posts yet, at the moment.
I totally agree with not caring about who wins at sports. People get so excited about someone winning a game and inside I think, "This is going to change my life ... how???"
As for the blogging thing, we've talked about all that before. The only thing is that feeling that you're leaving a mess behind you. I've got an alt account where I stash my inactive blogs. Some of it I feel like it's good stuff that's just sitting and I wish I had some way of "repackaging" it or something, and then a lot of it, I'm just like, "This can stay buried. Ugghhhh." But in the end, I guess all you can do is clear the past away and try to move on.
(I'm copying these comments from the other place where these posts were first hung out to dry)
B.W. said...
I want to add too that my Encyclopedia of Counted Sheep blog has been kind of an anchor for me. I'm glad that I've resisted any temptation to drop it or make any real radical alterations to it over the years (other than restarting it back in 2011, which I think has proved to be a good decision.) I don't expect it to be the blog that will ever really "take off", mostly because I don't know how accessible the material is for anyone else. I imagine someone just stumbling in and going, "What is this? Why is this guy going on about shaving his head and tattooing clocks on his back?" And half the time, I know that I'm not even abiding by the rules of telling a decent and fully formed story. They're more like rough sketches. I try to make them bloom into something, but more often than not, they just don't quite come off. But I leave them up. It's a place to practice, to run through the scales. And I like having a place to remember my dreams and even polish them up a little. And I know that I won't "run out" of dreams, so I don't have to worry about running out of stuff to write about there. And even when it starts to feel stale, dreams themselves have a way of making a fresh impact on you that revitalizes the whole enterprise. I like to have it for me. It works out well. If you've guys get something out of it, that's even better.
Anyway, I had a point when I started saying all this, but I seemed to have lost it. I guess I'm just sharing an experience, for what it's worth.
B.W. said...
Okay, I know what I want to say. Third times the charm.
I was thinking about your Wayfarer blog the other day. I was thinking about how I tried to do a Wayfarer "type" blog a few years back and how I failed at it and what I learned from it. I always had this kind of fantasy of keeping a journal where I put down all my interesting little thoughts and interesting little things that might happen in my day to day life. I had an image in my mind of a journal as this colorful mosaic of days. But the fact is, my life isn't all that interesting and when my mind isn't actively engaged in some subject, it tends to run in pretty mundane circles. I just don't have the kind of fertile life that gives me stuff to write about. I wish it did. That's what I loved about your blog. It WAS that kind of journal. It WAS this sublime world of musings and experiences. For me, I have to have some point of focus. To write a blog (or anything) I have to know THIS is the kind of material I need to come up with ideas for, and I have to be actively thinking and coming up with those kinds of ideas. Left to my own devices, I think about things like whether it's safe to eat the cheese that melted to the plate in the microwave or what pocket I should put my change in when the cashier hands it back to me.
So this ties in with your theme of organization (I think.) Some people are just kind of wired that way. I need that concept or point of focus to engage my creative energies. Otherwise, all my mental energy just trickles down through the laziest channels imaginable. That's why I described it once as being like a trapdoor in the sky. It gets me out of that funk. My mind and my imagination need some place to go away from all of this, and I need SOMETHING that points me in the right direction. And I think other people are wired that way too. It may be ancient Greek poets. It may be a art gallery that they wander through in their minds. It may be a fluffy purple trapper keeper.
Oh, the uncertainties of politics. I do hope all works out for the GB and the UK. For me I need to decide which evil person is the least evil for my vote in November and hope the best for the States.
Vincent; one of the interesting differences between writing an obscure blog - and an unpublished book - is that the blog attracts almost instant feed back.
A "Book"? Um, negotiating publishers, editors, publishers, marketing gurus, editors, re-writes ....
I do agree, David. My “book” will reflect some of that feedback, and the fun we’ve had over the years, interacting. But as I emailed you just now, I feel that blogging is in general decline. Or else we are!
Bill, do you really think they are evil? I shall be charitable and call them flawed human beings. It’s a hard choice though. Whatever happens, on your side and ours, big changes are afoot. An overhaul was needed. It's an uncertain world, as you say, and to me this draws out the sense of individual responsibility and also the sense of pulling together. As opposed to complacency & profiting from the status quo.
Ellie, as ever much food for thought, thanks! You describe a direction of consciousness that the modern world needs as much as ever. But where are the public signposts? We need new ones.
David, I too have thought that agents, editors & publishers are in some sense obstacles to the writer.
Yet the more I do my own rewrites, taking endless pains to produce a text worthy by multiple criteria, the more I appreciate and feel the need for the expertise that agents, editors and publishers offer.
It's as if the more I know, the less I know. I like it this way.
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