I went. I listened.  I chatted rather ineptly. I bought my copy.  Review coming sometime.

But buy it now anyway..

Caspar’s launch review? “Grown-ups are too noisy.”

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{Edited to correct a misquote.  Please see end note.}

Inside Miscellaneous Voices: Australian Blog Writing you will find reflections on love, loss, literature, and how our lives are being affected by the shifting methods of communication in this digital age.

Featuring the work of James Bradley, Lisa Dempster, Angela Meyer, Jennifer Mills, A. S. Patric, Penni Russon, and many others.

That is the blurb you’ll find over at Miscellaneous Press for this recently released anthology of Australian blog writing.  Over at  The Australian, Geordie Williamson calls it, “after its modest fashion, something of a landmark text”. (My italics)

I have not read it yet, but I will be getting my hands on a copy soon.  For a small publishing company, with a work possibly not likely to appeal to a wide audience, I think a mention in The Australian is a win.  For bloggers though, I’m not sure the overall article was.  It… got on my goat.

And judging by the comments over at James Bradley’s City of Tongues, I wasn’t the only one slightly irritated.

I’ll state my bias at the outset.  Misc Press is the brainchild of Karen Andrews who some of us know well as Miscmum, who I have had the good fortune to meet in person and who happens to have written one of Caspar’s favourite books.  And some bloggers I am “friends” with are represented in the anthology.  Moreover, when I clicked through to the article from Karen’s Facebook link I will admit I was expecting something more akin to a review, which was not the article’s intent.

So with biases and false expectations fully disclosed, what exactly was it that irked me?

James Bradley put his finger on it really, when he wrote that the article “attempts to resituate the deeply tedious debate about the value of online writing by asking some questions about the aesthetics of blogging, and how the form alters the way we write.”  (Again, these are my italics.)

Already, based solely on the premise of the article, I’m tired.

To a certain extent, I want to have it both ways.  I want blog writing to be judged on its own merit, without the medium interfering with the way we receive it.  And I want it to be judged with its nature taken into account, not to have it compared with or squeezed into some hierarchical literary canon.  Essentially, I suppose , this is what Williamson’s question is for, but isn’t it past time commentators on the subject stopped asking the question and started to simply address the content as what it is for what it’s worth?

While millions of people blog, all of us who do are familiar with that blank look that washes over the faces of those who don’t if the subject ever comes up. I admit, for those on the “outside” it is a foreign country, and not a highly respected one. Alec Patric’s thoughts on blogging before he began a.s.patric.Ink were the fairly standard ones:

…I didn’t know much at all about blogs or bloggers. On an abstract level my estimations of what blogging meant couldn’t have been lower, but basically, I was entirely oblivious. I’d literally never seen a blog. It was a territory within the internet landscape that I’d never wanted to explore. _{Questions for the Brave New World}

One of the (many) things that irritated me about the article was Williamson’s focus on the style of writing which makes for “popularity”.

It is the briefer, nimbler, more flirtatious forms that meet with greatest success in an online setting. The personal essay and the feuilleton — gossipy, critical, glancing supplements to the larger narratives of the day…

We are all aware that the internet is shallow.  That it is full of dross, and trolls, and gossips and liars.  We all know that appealing to the lowest common denominator is what “sells”.  But isn’t even bothering to make such an observation rather facile? (And can’t the same be said of journalism, music, television?) Isn’t the fact that few commentators can discuss blogging, even in a positive light, without bringing it up rather back-handed?

To use an analogy: We don’t need to point out that some hip-hop is misogynistic and homophobic, or discuss the ways in which hip-hop has become commercialised, or even to like hip-hop in order to say that The Message is poetry.

To be fair, Williamson’s characterisation of blogging was not overly harsh or unreasonably critical.  It wasn’t overtly critical at all.  I think most of us would agree with the generalities he discussed. I do feel, however, that the generalities lead too often to unjust comparisons.  Can we so easily ignore that the best writing, even in print, sells hardly at all while junk fiction like The Da Vinci Code, which is as replete with appalling grammar as the web is, rakes in millions.  If we must compare, can we at least compare apples with apples?

(I think Williamson’s possibly subconscious bias on this point is most evident in the statement, “Bloggers still aspire to print publication, with its hard-to-shake promise of literary immortality”.  Actually, very few of the bloggers I know have such aspirations, and I believe that includes some who are featured in the anthology.)

One thing he does discuss is poetry, suggesting that it is “liberated” by being on the page instead of the screen where too many distractions are only a click away, that it demands “readerly monogamy”.  I agree that poetry requires attention, but I would also suggest that few people have enough interest to give it that kind of attention, whether there are buttons to push or not. Last time I checked, none of the major publishers even accept poetry submissions anymore. In this mass-market world we live in… Thank goodness for poetry blogs!

Which leads me to what I consider a huge failure in this particular discourse, which Williamson mentions although it is not his purpose, and that is the idea that blogging is democracy.  It isn’t.  Mass markets are democracy.  Regression to the mean is democracy.  What blogging is, and why it can offer so much to those engaged with it, is anarchy.  It isn’t globalisation; it is tribalism.

Our tribes are not racial or geographical.  They are poets connecting to poets.  They are bedroom philosophers connecting to those who ask similar questions. They are sexual abuse victims connecting to others who share a history and a language the broader culture doesn’t understand. They are mothers of autistic children. They are historians, comedians, fantasists and fetishists. They are anyone who finds a home somewhere for the words and thoughts and feelings they value the most but which our workaday lives do not necessarily have room for.

When Williamson writes about the “failure of poetry and fiction to create a vigorous online presence”, I can only assume he is measuring by popularity rather than vitality and it is in that equation that he misses the point. Because blogging is hip-hop.  Back in the day.  On the streets of The Bronx.

It’s like a jungle sometimes.

I do believe that judging the merit of writing on blogs as literature is valid – for blog writing that is literary.  I do believe that looking at stylistic patterns is valid – as a study of the way we communicate.   But in a world where librarians and archivists are struggling to find ways to both preserve and catalog electronic media and, even more importantly, trying to figure out exactly what to preserve, Miscellaneous Voices is a landmark text.  It is a project which grapples with those questions and I would really like a commentator to address it on that level, rather than sliding into the print vs. digital “value” or “style” debate.

(I hope I have not been unjust to Geordie Williamson here.  While I found the general tone dismissive, I do believe he was somewhat sympathetic.  And he is the chief literary critic at The Australian, so it is not unnatural that he approached the book in this way.)

ERRATUM: I misquoted James early in the post as saying the article was an attempt to “resuscitate the deeply tedious debate”, where he actually wrote “resituate”. Obviously an entirely different meaning and, I think, a fairer assessment of the overall focus.  I was regrettably unable to find room, or time, in this post to discuss all the more positive, and complex, nuances of Geordie’s piece (hence the inadequate disclaimer tacked on at the end) and am hoping to have time to address the broader issues in a more balanced way soon.  At the same time, however, I also believe I pulled my punches on some points because I view the article as (to quote James’ later post) “genuinely trying to grapple with some issues about the way we think about blogging and its relationship to the literary”.

My apologies to both James and Geordie for the error.

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Often the trackback goes unacknowledged, and I’m not known for staying on top of these sorts of things, so this post is simply to say thanks to all those who have linked to my posts during the first quarter of 2008. Well, all those that I am aware of anyway.

So here it is…

• Adam at The Body Shop Activist
• Andrew at Get A Real Blog and On Blogging Australia
• Bettina at Dances to the beet of her own drum
• Child Person at Child Person From The South
• Commander Khan at Random Tangent
• Duncan at Pacific Highlander
• Gill at Even In A Little Thing
• Guera at A Roaming Aussie Mum
• Joh at Joh Blogs
• Karen at Miscellaneous Adventures of an Aussie Mum
• Kate at A Byootiful Life
• Kelley at Magneto Bold Too
• Leigh at All For Women
• Lightening at Lightening and Lightening’s Blogworld
• Marj aka Thriver at Survivor’s Can Thrive
• Mark at Him That Writes
• Meg at Dipping Into the BlogPond
• Megan at Imaginif
• Mike at Crooks and Liars
• Rosemary Nissen-Wade at SnakyPoet
• Tanaudel at Errantry
• Widdle Shamrock at The Musings of a Green Knee Capping Leprechaun

Thanks, guys. I appreciate it.

xx cerebralmum

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And it will be in 8 minutes. In fact it will be over before I finish this post. I feel a long, long rant coming on about University IT. University bureaucracy? Well, it is what it’s always been and that is fine. I know how to work my way around that and find out what I need to know, when I need to know it. But now they’re all high tech, it’s a monster.

It was bad enough that the other day in the computer lab on campus I had to enter my password at least 8 times within the space of half an hour, all to do the most simple things. Could they not have a system that, you know, functions? Nooooo. You have to sign in for the computer, for the library, for the timetables, for the online studies units, for your enrolments, for your email… And so on and so on.

It. is. totally. fucked.

In better news, I am actually able to do a full time study load this semester. (Did I tell you that already?) I didn’t think that I would be able to, because of time considerations and Cas, but I can do a unit wholly online and I think that rocks. In fact, it’s a course requirement that I complete at least one unit online before I graduate. Just so they know I can use a computer.

So I’m signed up for a 2nd year history subject (I guess IT doesn’t care that I’m a freshman), Great Debates: Unfinished Business of The Past. Woo-hoo! Except…

The software they are using would have to be the most obstructive, inefficient, unintelligent software I have ever seen: Blackboard

It. is. totally. fucked.

It has modules and reading materials and links to other reading materials and it has discussion forums to take the place of tutorials.

Let’s just take a look at the wonderful user interface it has for the “forums”.

To read a post/thread you click. That’s fine. But it then opens up in a fucking popup window. Um, why? Now, I think the popup is senseless enough to call it bad design (and no, you cannot centre or right click to force it to open in a tab instead) but just to make it even more ridiculous, once you have closed the tiny box you have laboriously scrolled though (and no, it does not “remember” that you have adjusted the popup size), the page you are returning to refreshes!

WTF? If you’re going to use a popup or lightbox, isn’t the whole point so that you can view the detail without navigating away from or reloading the main page?

Now, I understand that they want to keep the unread/read up to date. They have, of course, gone about that in an entirely stupid way but perhaps they had good intentions. However, there is a little green star in my sidebar menu (which, incidentally, doesn’t resize or scroll well enough for me to see the full tree-directory) that is supposed to tell me when there is something new to see. And it does. All the time. Even when there is nothing new to see.

Oh, this post could go on and on and on… You get the picture. Just envisage the most basic functions taking a least 4 extra processes to achieve and you’ve got Blackboard.

I’m going to stop, because that is just one microscopic portion of what is wrong with this program and I could write a thesis. But before I do… My favourite fucked function?

There’s a button that says “accessibility”. I thought I’d give that a try, hoping they had something more functional for users with disabilities. Wanna know where that took me? To the Blackboard site and a page that says how considerate they’ve been about colour contrast. In a teeny weeny font.

It. is. totally. Blackboard.

(Btw, I’m going to be managing all my study notes etc on WordPress so my subdomain is now running a separate blog for that, Plato’s Sandbox. If you’re bored…)

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So.

I just launched a new blog and now have 2 to write for.

I’m a moderator at the Aussie Bloggers Forum.

I’m about to start contributing articles to a group blog.

I’m hard at work getting a charity ready to go public.

And I just got an unexpected letter in the mail. From the Victorian Tertiary Admission Centre.

Apparently, despite the fact that I did not fill out all the requisite forms, or sit the requisite tests, or send off the requisite paperwork, or order the requisite reports, the Powers That Be have (in their great wisdom) decided that they would love to let me back into university this year to finish my Bachelor of Arts.

They aren’t sending me to the one I wanted to go to, though, so perhaps the powers of the Powers That Be are limited. Regardless, on Tuesday I’m off to enrol because of course I can be a single mum, and a moderator, and a triple blogger, and a charity administrator, and university student, at the same time as I single-handedly repair a broken down housewhich I can’t get to because I am currently a little bit blind.

No worries.

Methinks 2008 won’t have a lot of time to spare for depression!

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Yes, that dastardly ISP did it again. There I was, Caspar tucked in with his bottle for a morning nap and where was the internet, I ask you? Oh, it was there: Just long enough for me to start testing the coding on some elements of the new blog. And then it was gone.

What was saved and where I was at? Good question. Instead of having one more thing ticked off my list and an afternoon of fun, what did I do? I dug my heels in good and deep.

I spent three and a half (yes, that’s 3 ½ ) hours on hold listening to something that soundly vaguely reminiscent of muzak echoing through a mile of rusted pipe, interrupted only by a saccharine voice saying, “We are sorry for the delay. Your call will be answered as soon as possible”. And you know how much I love saccharine.

Of course, it might have been me digging my nose in to spite my face, rather than my heels. My call might have been lost in the ether. I’ve been told on good authority that can happen. (Big Sis. She worked in call centres until her spinal injury.) But, dammit, they’re a communications company! They should be better communicators.

I am stubborn.

(Unfortunately this story doesn’t have a dramatic ending and I can’t recount to you all the scathing things I said to them, the things I know everyone has wanted to say to “service” providers at some stage and gets vicarious enjoyment from hearing, because the connection returned all by itself and I hung up.)

But I have work to do. Just a little bit more tweaking over at Blogging Personal to get it ready for launching. In truth, I could have launched it by now. I have some things written and the site is functional. But I’m scared.

Writing a personal blog and writing a blog intended as a resource are two very different things. No matter how much you frame it as a conversation, because it’s your space it is in some ways a claim to authority. But I’m opinionated and I have convictions and if caring about something constitutes authority then I’m okay with that. I guess.

Another thing that makes it scary is that, even unlaunched, the site has already had a great response and I think that shows how many of us want someone to be talking seriously about personal blogging, not just calling it noise and moving on to how you can make the most money. That feels like a big responsibility and I really hope that I don’t disappoint anyone.

Yes, that sounds megalomaniacal. I’m not saying the worries are justified. I’m just saying that I feel them.

So to get over that, I’ve set the launch date in stone. The first post is being published on Tuesday, January 15, come hell or high water, so I’m off to spend the evening tending to my new baby, making sure everything is perfect for its arrival.

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Meg from Dipping into the Blogpond, Andrew Boyd from On Blogging Australia and Snoskred from Life in the Country, all of whom I like and respect, have gotten together and created a community space for us!The Aussie Bloggers Forum is now open for registration and the group blog will be launching on January 21st.

I won’t wax lyrical about it here. Go and read Meg’s announcement (my, I’ve been bossy these last couple of days!) and get the lowdown. I hope a few of you will sign up. Even you guys who aren’t Aussies. All are welcome.

Oh, wait. I’ve changed my mind and will wax lyrical. I have a tendency to do that.

I’d just like to say that there are a couple of groups* which have made blogging a wonderful experience for me. One is those I’ve met through Megan and the Carnival Against Child Abuse which Marj runs, and the heart of the other is these guys. A lot of the people I’ve met since embarking on this journey have been because of their community spirit and I feel very fortunate to have crossed paths with them.

I’m already signed up, of course, but under my real name so those of you who know it will know who to look for. For the time being, I’ve decided to keep The Cerebral Mum and that new project I’ve coyly mentioned separate. At some stage I will make a firm decision, but that’s for another post.

Either way, I hope you’ll come to the forum. There are already a lot of great bloggers and great people connecting there. If you don’t know them yet, I promise they are worth meeting.

*NB: There are of course some individuals too. You know who you are.

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