kindly handicap
I've been writing like crazy lately. No useful surface is spared when I get that itch to write in spasms. I've been writing so much with pens and pencils & crayons & eyeliners & anything handy that, when I get on the keyboard, I notice that I've regressed into committing whole new patterns of typos. It used to be about errors of brevity, my battles
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I don't attest to know why people comment or how, but I can conjecture patterns. That I've trained them in any way is absurd. The best I can do is boast an understanding, suggest that I'm composed of essential stuff, and that they should like and indulge me as reliable correspondence. Users like trickeration above deserve all the comments they get because their journals are very funny, and in this sense, interactive, for people feel grateful for all the laughs, and they respond in thanks. Journals like yours and mine are more introspective, more thorough, maybe they attempt to be beautiful or engaging, instead of entertaining, but they are so constructed that readers feel that all has been said and there's nothing to add. All they have to include is their reactions and some people might feel that their two cents are unworthy of following such an admirable and tightly-knit work, even as a small footnote. People are lazy, shy, or like me, are overly concerned with leaving a definitive crater of their existence each time.
Personally, I think I am too severe to inspire regular commentary from an audience. When viewing a carefully presented drama, the crowd is supposed to listen in silence and pay attention, right? You don't really know if there's a crowd or not ... you assume people care. This isn't like performing music live and being aware that you're sharing a chunk of time and space with an audience. You can see the bored or bemused faces that are a direct result of your stimulation. In Livejournal, there is no benefit of assured feedback, unless you run around and pander. You write anyway and that's why writing is a noble profession.
If I could control my readers, I'd have 100+ comments each post and the majority would be disjointed fragments having nothing to do with the subject matter at hand, but with a particular word or phrase or feeling. I'd welcome tangents more than linear opinions. I think it's a mistake that a response should be limited to commentary about the post itself. You get comments that compliment your writing and those are nice, but you have no idea where they came from ... I always thought that those were moreso invitations into the flatterer's own journal. They proclaim I'm here! I like this! Read into me to add further meaning to my appreciation.
I used to be more involved in Livejournal interaction and communities. I knew more about people, their lives, relationships between users, their statements, and my comments bore the weight of all this knowledge. I've since lost touch and, browsing through people's journals, I get intimidated by all the information I missed in my absences. It's too much, and this prevents me from wanting to comment. If I'm going to comment, as a rule, I must avoid banalities.
I try to be sympathetic to what's going on. I can remember all my old comments and, like this one, they came off as egotistical rants instead of attempts at communication. Livejournal is like an enormous bathhouse, an arena of egos, and if you're going to venture a word to someone else, you will be thwarted by an overbearing regard for your self and your inexistence in onlookers' eyes.
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and i think you've got the thing caught, here, really. you and i are of the same mind as regards what we'd git if we'd our 'druthers.
and my problem is, a comment feels like a thing IN TIME, so i write back even when i'm not in the mood for writing. which is a bigger influence on my writing than it maybe should be. in any case, what you've said above doesn't feel like an egotistical rant. it feels like an im-mense attempt at communication; one so thoughtful that it almost precludes what it's after. but that's not your fault, it's mine.
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do you have a switch? i don't know can't tell whether it's some kind of defense mechanism or just a habit of my character, but i've got at least two distinct Modes of writing. both are the children of my Old Old habit of overwriting, not yet deceased. but the one with the heavy hand only comes out when i'm thinking posterity.
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i have never seen you write informally, is all i'm asking.
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Writing is easy. All you have to do is stare at a blank piece of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.
I am probably a better conversationalist than I am a writer. Writing has become such a rigid task for me. I have to squeeze myself into these symbols like corsets and the outcome is always very dense. I get one good sentence that doesn't seem stuffy out of the several paragraphs I spill and I'm satisfied with that. In the end, I just want to get it out and behind me and start something new. Often times I will go back to it after I let it sit for awhile. I'm a fastidious editor this way.
A better place for me would be the vocal tradition of the old Greek poets, which must have sounded the way Ezra Pound used to read his stuff, like a serious chant. My readings and tone would be more matter of fact. None of that jazzy jive bullshit you get at slams.
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what you're talking about reads to me like you're about to pop the seam on your most recent cocoon d'style. which is always a good thing, i think.
ezra's my favourite. i used to listen to a tape of him reading on the way to and from school every day, a fourty minute drive. i'd give rides to people and they'd laugh, and i would almost kick them OUT.
the very CONCEPT of slam poetry eludes me. not rap, not poetry, it's a SLAM. it's a bunch of people who should be Slamming about vintaging and eating low-carb, if they were being honest. most of them only go by one one-syllable name, though, so i'm afraid to tell them that.
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