I was thinking today of all the invisible people on blogs (readers, anons) and all those who are trying to become visible ('writers'), thinking of missed conversations, and things I've never said as well. I mean, despite all the fanfare, does blogging actually connect people in any real way? I don't know, talking with someone over coffee, hearing their voice, seeing their face (er..and bodies) just isn't the same.I've nothing against invisibility. Growing up as an outsider/foreigner one is acutely aware of the desire to be seen and not to be seen..the freedom of not being seen, of being on the margins, roaming around there, is something the mainstream probably just doesn't get.
We all become invisible, loosed from body and duty, left to drift on the night breeze, to do as we will, to cast about for what we like to be when we next occur.That, let me promise you, is not an empty moment...Just to slide away like a whisper down the wind is no small freedom, and if we are ever lucky enough to win such a setting-free, we should use it, for it is the only naturally occurring consolation that comes to us, sole and sovereign, without props or the forbearance of others-among whom I mean to include God himself, who does not let us stay invisible long, since that is a state he reserves for himself.
---R. Ford, The Sportswriter
But even this seems so different from the forced invisibility of marginal groups (women, the poor).
In T's village over the weekend:
Wonderful hospitality,as expected. And to see the shrine of the saint who's at the head of the main Sufi order in the Punjab was something special. The saint, sick of the world, moves here to escape the prying eyes of the world, to be alone with the Alone. But I'm not religious and so wasn't really moved. What did stick, though, was this:
Standing in the fields at 1 in the morning, erecting these long nets, set in the shape of a large 'L' so that we could shoot quail in the morning. No-one around for miles-and certainly no quails-just darkness and the moonlight floating effortlessly on the swaying grass, and the recording of the quails chirping away in the background so as to attract them to this spot.
And then someone told me that an old woman, a sixty-year old woman, who had been collecting firewood had been brutally raped one mile from here. And all the ghoulish details followed. And I thought to myself : most people in this country-the rural and urban poor-are just invisible in a way that is as close to being nothing, a no-one, as is possible.
The human figure is progressively disappearing from pictorial art, as no object is present except in fragmentary form. This is one more proof that the human countenance has become ugly and outworn, and that the things which surround us have become things of revulsion.
---Hugo Ball.
4 comments:
As an invisible (and by no means regular) reader I thought I'd pop out of the woodwork for a sec...
I think blogging does connect people, or it can. I have friends who moved across the country to my neighborhood, and we never would have known each other so well if it hadn't been for our blogs-- as well as other forms of distance communication (not always electronic), but still the blogs were a big part of the glue. Blogs provide a way to have a casual public conversation, much like meeting a bunch of people in a coffee shop. Or, that is what our blogs do. But they are mostly for each other, a rather tight knit community of people who went to the same college.
I have made occasional attempts to make my blog into something outsiders might like to read. At one point, in a period of creative expansiveness, I did make a few new connections. But my interests range in all sorts of directions, and it's difficult to keep any consistent topic or even aesthetic, which I think would be necessary to interest anyone who doesn't actually know me. And in fact I find it much easier to read the blogs of people I know, as well.
But I do sometimes feel invisible, there and in other contexts. There is a contrary desire to be observer and observed. As observer I feel solid. As soon as I wish to be observed, I notice the faintness of my own reflection. Chasing after it is almost always a mistake.
--Erika.
www.m14m.net/erika
i should think about the blogging issue that it should not be seen in opposition to contact with real people, for me it's not either real people or blogularity, rather, they can complement each other, like that one in the internet sometimes can find people that are interested in some nerdularity none of your real friends is interested in...blogularity just as a different way of connecting with people, one of the many possibilities that are there...
Erika, hello. Thanks for popping out/in ! :-)
I guess it's just the blogs I read then..the conversation always seems a bit stunted, hesitant or even confrontational at times.
Where I'm not sure I completely agree with you is in the publicness of it. Here I think we need a common world, a common space-and that, for me, requires appearances (a face, a voice).
What you're saying is interesting: that blogging really works for you with people who are *already* your friends.
I like what you have to say about the contrariness of it.
Thanks for taking the time out and writing.
Keep well,
b.
Anton, hi :-)
yes, I think you're right, it isn't necessarily either/or. But anton, I wonder as we continue to use the internet whether our conversational skills with "real" people will diminish?
for me here's the thing: bloggers are already by self-selection a bit locked into their own world. I know there's public access but it really seems to me more about putting into the open one's private thoughts, rather than a genuine public conversation or the ability to listen.
yes, that's it exactly..and I love the word..nerdularity! :) Can nerds connect? Perhaps nerdularity is the very inability to connect?
Sorry, just don't share your optimism (guess I'm too old fashioned at heart). I think it's very rare that one set of possibilities emerge without others receding.
Best wishes,
b.
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