Put Me Back In The Mud

I'll just plead artistic temperament, here. Of course I'm a big emotional mess; that's what performing artists do: go out in front of the crowd and feel something. And I have been thinking of blogging as performing... specifically, as a sort of "slow radio". Because while I hope it's obvious that my prose is edited pretty carefully, part of my blogging ethic has always been: do it fast! Get it out there! And (part of) the real subject matter, for me, is always the "sound of my voice".

And, whaddaya know, singing is quite a bit on my mind these days. In fact, you might as well know the worst right away, some days I walk around pretty much everywhere I go singing and always have. (My dad was a first rate entertainer and my brother's a top pro musician, so maybe it's a family thing... but I say this mostly to precaution you that I'm a beginner in music [a long-time beginner, but a beginner just the same].)

The thing is, right in here lately I've been, what I'll go ahead and admit, studying guitar. My act, when it's ready, is voice and guitar, so besides the stuff that just flows out of me (because I happen not to be lecturing or ranting or what have you, and, like I said, I love the sound...), there's now a "practicing" aspect to some of my singing... but I sure wouldn't want to say I'm "studying" that.

My astonishingly-reliable mother has informed me that as I child I once informed her of my opinion, stated as a fact (as must've been a habit of mine even then), that written music was "impossible". My brother and sister took piano, but I took a pass: I was pretty devoted to this part of my ignorance evidently. I think probably it was some sort of Math Anxiety for Music thing. But that's another blogpost.

Because it's studying guitar that was, until recently, my favorite source of "studying studying" brain-candy: examples from experience of how learning happens (for me to mull over as my hands do the actual learning). The guitar just keeps seeming to be telling me how it needs to be worked with.

You can get pretty mystical about this kind of thing real quick as I expect you know and I sure don't want that (just now). Because, forget the guitar. A new MacBook, to an Apple tyro, is a teaches-you-how-to-learn-it machine, literally. Complete with a whole teaches-you-to-be-in-it culture (but wait a minute; that's just to say, a culture).

And so, even before the need for a new blog (with comment threads, which for me right now means "hosted"...) suddenly arose out of nowhere, I recently made some remarks on the iTunes "jukebox" in Vlorblog and uploaded some pictures made with "Photo Booth". The trouble with this is that I'm more than a little self-conscious after decades of calculator-bashing (unrepented of as of now, so don't get me wrong) about doing a "learning about my computer" blog when I'd be unlikely to follow a link on that theme myself. Wheras by contrast, math is the world's greatest subject matter. I've remarked many times on what a tremendous comfort this has been to me as a lecturer... no matter how badly I might be blowing it at any particular time, whatever it is I'm trying and failing to get at is just amazingly worthwhile, so I have the strength to go on.

Playing in the blathosphere was a natural for me. The Web was the "killer ap" to me since I saw it; I could always pretty much take-or-leave anything to do with computers until hypertext grabbed me all at once at first sight. And just as hard as TV had in my childhood.

So in the early days of the web, I just put up a bunch of math links. But by now there's way too much going on and I needed a smaller beat: blogs. Bingo. A-and... what was I saying about culture? An online "community" with some close spiritual kin: students and teachers of math. So wow.

But, well, you know me with the whole "you can't overdo getting too much of too many good things" bit. If the concept of "internet addict" has any validity at all, then I suppose I am one, and expect that it's even pretty obvious (were it not for the Observer Tautology: nothing is obvious [until it is]). So there that is. But... too late to stop now! Anyhow, I haven't suffered any horrible consequences yet... and what kind of addiction do you call that?

So. What's my subject matter, so I can forgive myself when I'm missing my marks? On the other hand, wha. People do personal blogs all the time: "stuff that interests me" is a perfectly reasonable subject for a blog; at some level the only one.

Ah, but how personal?