Sunday, June 6, 2010

Tumbling

I haven't been posting here of late...

I have decided to put this blog on hiatus until September.
I'm dealing with some intense family issues which is requiring more and more of my energy, and is about to require my full time attention.

No surprise, in the midst of all this, I haven't had the concentration or frame of mind to organize my thoughts much less post.

One thing I have kind of lost myself in is tumblr micro blogs...


...one of the latest platforms to satisfy our collectively shrinking attention span...

I can drift into interesting stuff and graze in and out of people's public persona's and not feel so isolated in my own head.

It's kind of compulsive, but satisfying in a big way.


The Tumblr interface is much easier, you can pick from a wide variety of custom themes (alternate page structures), images can be much bigger, and that has a lot of appeal. 

Blogger seriously needs to address some of their long standing code bugs and formatting problems. 

So in my compromised state of mind I shift my feeble attention to microblogging whenever I have my wits about me or any time to do it.

Every post is a mix of appreciation, astonishment, outrage, desire, folly, personal expression, or acknowledgment ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous.
 



I get inspired when I see other peoples original work- and I have run across quite a few amazing portfolios in my drifting from Tumblr, to Flickr, to Deviantart, other blogs, public pages on various social networks to personal sites. 


 Not to mention the blur of explicit images intermixed into everything too.


It makes me want to go back and dig through all my old stuff and scan and post... if only to remember that I used to have ideas too. 
I still have ideas, I just have no time to develop them. 

This has been my bane for two decades, now that it's reaching a fever pitch it's not surprising that I would find solace in immersing myself in glimpses of others creative imagination, curated pics from around the web and familiar favorites that comfort my stressed present life.


Is this simply getting in touch with my inner teenager? Pathetic distraction? Another mid-life crisis? Acting out of my age? 


Maybe a little of all...


In the Seventies watching network television had a kind of collective culture experience to it... in that the day after whatever was broadcast everyone would be talking about whatever was on- and since there were only three choices there was a lot of cross-over.  

I miss this in the age of internet, video and 500 channels of cable. 

As odd is it seems Tumbling reminds me of this collective experience... the way people comment, reblog or follow one another... it's a different experience for a different time with a much broader sweep... I don't know why I'm experiencing this with Tumblr and not so much with Blogger...


... it seems we speak more and more though our shared visual memory... descriptions are almost unnecessary, and few have much in the way of further identifying information.

Each blog curates its own emotional landscape and personality. Doesn't matter whether they are serious or irreverent or explicit they all function the same way. 

They are all snapshots of ourselves, abstract portraits of a new kind...


At their best they remind me of that feeling of possibility that comes with youth... a feeling I've largely lost. 

They makes me feel connected at a time when I feel utterly disconnected. 

They are arguably a visual indulgence, a waste of time and a cultural phenomenon that allows me to participate in a very random way. 
I can drift in or out... spending 5 minutes or 50... and they eventually push my imagination back to my own ideas, if in a convoluted way.

Perhaps I can look back at some point in the future and glean something of the unspoken of this time, maybe it is a long coded message, mostly meaningless, that will comfort me or reveal some detail that I can't see at the moment? 

or maybe it will all be lost or forgotten... or maybe someone else entirely will go though all these and make some sense of it that I can't see.
In an case...


It's helping me get though a difficult time... so peek in if you like, or if you are wise go outside and enjoy the beautiful summer that's almost here.

Here is mine: Perpetual Collapse

No comments: