So I gotta D+ today in getting along well with others.
Guess what. I'm doing the right thing. And you know how I know? Because I'm going to a PARTY!
And it's a wondercchickenparty, yes a wonderchicken party, and a wonderchicken party don't STOP!
Come on, come over. Go read Stavros TWC this minute. If you never read another post in your natural briefcasecarrying life, read this one.
You want to know what a weblog is? Risk.
Blogging IS risk. If you have $omething riding on blogging, $omething hanging on the words of others besides your soul and sweat and tears, then you lose. You lose. You aren't a blogger.
TELL IT TO EM STAVROS!
Risk it.
Otherwise this place becomes another safe, sanctified institution, controlled, where top takes control and voice takes a seat at the back of the bus.
And no one's allowed to turn it into that.
No. One.
Stavros took me back, today, to what it means.
TO WHAT IT MEANS TO BLOG.
And it couldn't have come at a better time.
If we had a web museum, this post would be there. This should be required reading. Link to it. All of you. Anyone with a fucking soul left in your body, link to it.
At least, Go. Read.
It was, for a while, as if we were all fans of the punk, you see, together out there on the floor, drenched in sweat, pogoing, hurling beer cans, singing along, not really caring which band was up on the stage, just loving the hum and the throb and the tribal feeling of it all. Now it feels as if many of us have become fans of various specific bands, or have started our own and are struggling to gather our own crowds, or have decided to just keep it in the garage where it belongs, and damn having an audience. We don't have time to go to each others' gigs anymore. When everyone is in a band, there's no one left to watch the shows.
Let him tell you.
STAVROS on weblogging then and now:
The weblogging gangs of old, the ones I felt a part of, well, they still are loosely bound, but the threads are so thin now that they are almost invisible.
It's only punk rock, but we like it.
I had, at the age of 18, though, not yet discovered that there were tens or hundreds of thousands of others with the same sorts of unpleasant societally-discouraged aberrations, and they'd been gathering together and making this mad, loud, ramshackle, gloriously angry music for years already.
STAVROS SAYS, "These people will destroy your soul. Classification is for insects" THAT'S WHAT STAVROS SAYS.
Weblogs are a party, damn it, and sometimes they're publications too, or instead, and sometimes they're diaries, sometimes they're pieces of art, sometimes they're tools for self-promotion, sometimes they're money-maknig ventures, sometimes they're monuments to ego, sometimes they're massive wanks, sometimes they're public services, sometimes they're dedications of faith, sometimes they're communities. Always, they are a public face, one chosen and crafted to varying degrees, of the people who write them. They are avatars, masks, or revelations of our deepest selves. They are political or philosophical, merrily inebriate or sententiously sober. Do not listen to those who would tell you what they are not.
Look for your teachers among the thorny trails and pricker bushes, people.
Although its public face may suck pretty bad for a while, and you may need to dig a bit deeper to find its soul, there will always be those in the Fields of Blog who will tell you what they really think, and some of those will move you while doing it, regardless of how well they write. And they'll do it without having to look over their shoulders. 'cause it's a fucking party, pops, and you're invited.
And in the swill of an empty bottle.
