lines in the sand

 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.