It's really quite ironic that I've been calling myself a "writer" since the new millennium -- the early years of which will forever be remembered in the history books as the dawn of a new era of self-publishing -- and today, July 30, 2008 marks the first day of my so-called "blog." Call me old-school, call me needy of attention, but I've always craved the legitimacy of an official "byline," words that you can hold on to, or at least which appear online in a very public place.
Which is all so very 1995 of me.
Why have I avoided the blog for all this time? Why am I a 32-year-old virgin when it comes to self-publishing? How could I have been a surfer on a decade's worth of dot.com waves and not have washed up on the glorious shores of DIY, online publishing?
I think Hank Moody, as played by the fabulous David Duchnovy, sums up my irreverence (ignorance, perhaps?) for this new kind of writing in way funnier terms than I can muster, in last week's episode of Californication:
[People] seem to be getting dumber and dumber. I mean we have all this amazing technology and yet computers have turned into basically four figure wank machines. The Internet was supposed to set us free, democratize us, but all it’s really given us is Howard Dean’s aborted candidacy and 24-hour a day access to kiddie porn, you know. And people don’t write anymore, they blog; instead of talking, they text; no punctuation, no grammar. LOL this and LMFAO that. You know it just seems to me that it’s just a bunch of stupid people psuedo-communicating with a bunch of other stupid people in a proto-language that resembles more what cavemen used to speak than the king’s English.
Hank's fiery tirade really gets me going in a "Right on!" kind of way, especially the part where he says, "And people don't write anymore, they blog; instead of talking, they text; no punctuation, no grammar." I concur, Hank. You go, buddy! Blogging is like verbal diarhhea (spell checker: please do double-check the d-word, as I'm prone to typing that one wrong) to the proper journalist's fully formed and completely digested bowel movement. Forgive me -- Hank Moody inspires me to be crass. If you've seen Californication, you understand. If you haven't, boot up your Netflix queue and get that show in your lineup: it offers up the best commentary on the dumbing-down, sell-out nature of our Hollywood-saturated culture.
Despite Hank Moody's frustrations, of course, the very hand he that he bites is that one that feeds him: as a washed-up novelist with a debilitating writer's block, his only gig these days is as a blogger for a popular L.A. Web zine.
And so, I join Hank Moody in the blogosphere. Though this practice feels a bit self-indulgent (OK, a lot self-indulgent, but what art form or personal writing doesn't?), maybe this blogging thing is really about self-awareness, sharing the insights, and community. To quote another pay-cable show, Dianne Wiest, playing a therapist, said in HBO's In Treatment (in response to a patient challenging the importance of psycho therapy), "Who would chose to live an un-examined life?" Here I am Hank! If you can't beat 'em, join 'em is the proper cliché to quote, I suppose.
OK. Why is the topic of this blog "Art Not Babies?" you may ask.
I continue to be fascinated by the popular media's and our society's obsession with babies. Brangelina and the twins this; J-Lo and her twins that; Madonna adopts Baby David . Jamie-Lynn Spears -- yada, yada, yada ... The celebrity pregnancy is a new genre of entertainment "journalism." The obsession carries over, of course, to health zines, blogs, and pubs, to women's publications... I suppose I am sensitive to this because I am a DINK (double income - no kids), married woman living in Manhattan and to be in this situation at age 32, you start to feel the world around you question why you are not thinking, baby, baby, baby ... when clearly the rest of the "normal" world is. I suppose in writing this blog, I am embarking on a voyage to figure out why I am so ambivalent about baby-making and why I am so annoyed by our culture's obsession with it.
This blog will feature art reviews, reactions, opinions, interviews, and an ongoing consideration of what art and what babies mean to our society, culture, and American character.
And to me.
Yours artfully,
Joanne
