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Writing from a place far from simple

Andrew over at Jap|andrew has an interesting take on Moblogging and its parallels to the vision of sci-fi writer Robert Heinlein:

So what was Heinlein’s vision all about? Basically, implants would allow viewers access data, streamed live from the “actor” who would spend their lives living for their viewers, while their viewers spent their lives living vicariously through the actors. How far away are we from this? Not that far, I think. Technologically speaking we are probably still quite a long way away, but otherwise we are almost there. Moblogging is just not quite as sexy as Heinlein’s version….

Andrew goes on to write:

So will I ever moblog? No. Frankly, I couldn’t be bothered. Do I think we should ever do the Heinlein thing? No. And to be honest, I don’t think anyone should have the gall to think that their lives are so interesting that people actually would want to see through their eyes 24-7.

All well and good, though I’m not sure “gall” is the word I would use, as it implies that the person living the hyperexamined 24-7 life would somehow be imposing his hubris on a consuming public who presumably would have the choice to view it (or not).

However, there was something in Andrew’s post that did bother me:

When I go to a temple here in Japan, I don’t want to be thinking of what pictures readers of this journal will want to see and when I go out for the weekend, I don’t want to be thinking of what my “theme” is going to be so that I can write about it here. I would rather just enjoy the experience, write some random thoughts here and let anyone who is interested have a look.

Isn’t that better in the end? Does everything have to be a production? Show me the simple life.

This reminds me not a little of the argument I used to hear a lot from fellow students in art school, when I would dare to actually discuss a film or artwork we had seen in class. “Why can’t you just enjoy the film, instead of having to analyze it?” was the nagging plaint. It never occurred to my naysayers that analyzing the film and engaging my mind in critical thinking was supremely enjoyable to me.

I certainly don’t view my blog as a “production,” in the sense I feel Andrew is using the term, ie. with elaborate planning and preparation. But I do see it as a creative work, a creative outlet for me, and a creative extension of other things I do, such as my photography. I care about what I publish, spend some time considering whether or not it will be of any value to those who stop by (and sometimes I choose not to spend time on such considerations), pay attention to feedback and comments I get, etc. That is just me. Just one approach. It works for me (for now). I don’t presume it’s any “better in the end” than any other approach, or worse for that matter.

Given this approach, I fully admit there’s an element of “this would be good to blog about” to things I do and places I go, which to me is no different from the freelance writer who keeps a file of story ideas, or carries their notebook with them wherever they go. To me, envisioning how I might write about some outing or event (looking for the “angle” as it’s called in reporting) adds another element to how I experience said outing or event. (It also helps me get through things I don’t want to do, like visiting relatives!) But I don’t think I’ve yet done something for the specific purpose of blogging about it.

But even if I were to take that approach, I don’t see anything inherently wrong in it, nor do I see it as somehow less “simple” than “enjoying the experience, writing random thoughts, and letting anyone enjoy it” etc. I suppose what bothers me is this false premise of “simple,” as if there’s some sort of primordial essence of blogging, or writing, or of life for that matter, with which other manifestations get measured against. It’s a bogeyman, frankly. Whether you choose to leave your blogging hat at home or not, how we experience things is never simple, never pure, never unadulterated. Both Andrew’s and I’s approach to how we write about the events of our respective lives are refractions of reality, experiences distilled though our eyes, and further filtered through the multifarious lenses of those who read us, a process which locates whatever we write, however we have written it, in a place far from simple.

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Private spaces, under the covers

A woman sits next to me on a crowded commuter train, reading a thick book in English. She’s Japanese, in her 50’s, and naturally my curiosity is piqued. What book I don’t know, but I see names like Goethe, and Germany. On the surface it must be history, or biograpy. But it reads like fiction. At any rate, I want to talk to her, find out the title, and why she’s reading it. But I don’t of course, the moment I do 10 pairs of eyes would shoot our way, bringing embarrassment. But I’m not worried about my embarrassment, but her’s. This is Japan, where people read their books on trains covered by some anonymous paper (usually provided by bookstores), giving them some “cover” of privacy. Of course it’s entirely possible she was actually letting me see the inside of her book on purpose, but we’ll never know, will we?

Posted via cellphone.

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Another attempt at moblogging…

If this works, then I owe Kevin of Bastish.net a beer, or two….will post more via the desktop (again, if this works).

FROM THE DESKTOP: Well, lo and behold, it worked! I should perhaps first off explain that what I just did there was post to this site via my cellphone, by sending an email from my phone’s email client. This is what they call “moblogging”, and something I’ve been pining for ever since I started to see Joi Ito start to do this late last year.

As mentioned above, credit for being able to do this goes to Kevin and his Moblog for Other People widget, not to mention his server which is receiving the email and then passing on my text (and later images) to this site. Kevin rightly realized that non-techie folks like myself would find the various scripts out there a bit beyond the pale of understanding and know-how, or as I discovered in earlier forays into this technology, not something one’s web hosts might readily setup. (I should also here send out a special mention to Dav, who set up Mie’s Tokyo Tidbits and very generously offered to do something similar for me to what Kevin ended up doing, though at the time I wasn’t sufficiently interested to bother him with it).

Now, I have moblogged before, using wapblogger and my cellphones web browser, but it was more cumbersome than I wanted. I’m still not too much further along in answering the question I’ve asked before, which is why exactly I need this capability, especially at the moment when all I can post is text. My musings are hardly of the variety that they need to be instantaneously sent to that part of the world that is reading this site, but then again, there are lots of small and perhaps inconsequential thoughts and observations that I do have that never see the light of day because I don’t notate them down.

Others who are now moblogging thanks to Kevin’s generosity include Japan-based blogs Based on a True Story, Domo Domo, and Tokyo Boy.