GK Chesterton said, "Art is knowing where to draw the line." Ay, there's the rub. Everyone is blogging these days, but is it art? My blog certainly isn't. But it is a cut above a diary. I know that because I also keep a diary. Now, there is banality in its lowest form. I remember a New Yorker cartoon of a man standing in the waves on a shore talking into a tape recorder (it would be a smartphone now, I guess) and he's noting the time and date before he begins. I do that. So mock me. I do. But when I'm alone, which is most of the time and not only when I deliberately isolate myself like this, the only 'human' voice I hear all day is SIRI on my iPad Mini, giving me the weather. So I need my diary with time and place noted to keep me centred and sane. At least I know where I am, though not what i'm thinking, or if i am. Thinking . My diary certainly isn't art and neither is my blog. I've been collecting bits and pieces, clippings and quotations and putting them in a blog folder for further consideration. The folder is a portable commonplace book, or maybe a compost heap. I use it not for focus but for argument, discussion, development, yeah, well, maybe for some focus. It has good lines. And it also keeps me humble. McLuhan predicted that one day everyone would be artists, that is, would-be. Wishing doesn't make it so. His caution was that when everyone is an artist (or wanna-be) who will be left to appreciate it? So everyone is blogging. So who is left to read the blogs? At least it doesn't use a lot of paper. Writing a blog on one's computer is like drawing lines in the sand. Time will wash them away. Yeah, that's poetic. Just press DISCARD.
shhhhh
It really is quiet here. I told you that I can hear myself swallow. Now my thoughts are sticking to the roof of my mouth. It has happened before, so it doesn't scare me. For 16 years I lived alone on the shore of a lake in Muskoka, and it was quiet there, too, except in the summer when the power boats turned the lake into Yonge Street and in the winter when the snowmobiles had drag races. November was quiet, though, before the ice was thick enough. And very few people get up as early as I do, so it's quiet in the morning, like now. One of the flies has survived, bit sluggish, but hanging in there, literally, on the ceiling, I think it's afraid of the lamp - too hot. Smart fly. Yes, I know I'm babbling. Also talking to myself. Out loud. Not too loud. I can hear myself think. Which a lot of people can't. It's not their hearing, it's their thinking that they're hard of. Ignore that. That wasn't kind. Hey, I'm not complaining. I like it, and it's not as if I'm not used to the hazards of living alone. You know what that means: be careful on the stairs, if any; remember to turn everything off; don't run out of anything you need and if you do, improvise. And if you find yourself talking to yourself, well, as they say, at least you've found someone intelligent.