Hopefully the LiveJournal vibes can be captured. Loved the voice posting. It was so long ago now. Here’s my attempt!
A voice post
did you ever use LiveJournal? I miss it a lot.
The reason I miss it mostly is because LiveJournal existed prior to social media, and was a great way to have a social media style friends list and feed, but it was long form too.
LiveJournal though was only long-form if you wanted it to be that. Otherwise it could be like Twitter/X – a short one line post was totally acceptable. Composing for LiveJournal really, in hindsight, feels like freedom. We currently live in a very rhetorically rigid world, one where a Tweet has a style, a Facebook post has a style, an Instagram post has a style – and you cannot move between them very easily. There’s no way that these modalities can cross between one another. Very frustrating.
However in the days of LiveJournal I could post a picture with a short comment, a one or two line (160 characters) comment on something, or a very long blog post.
I think that using this blog like I used to use LiveJournal is going to improve the quality of my posting, or at least give me some rhetorical variety that I am just now realizing I miss from direct social media.
People do use Facebook like a blog, but it’s really not the same thing. They are able to really rail against the things they hate – political and otherwise, or make extreme statements because they know the exact limits of their audience. They only post to those who are of a certain bent or position, so they are able to really push views that are not well constructed, thoughtful, or considerate of oppositional viewpoints.
But a blog, like this one, can’t relax in that way. I have no idea who will read this, so I have to write to a “universal audience” – the theory that I have to imagine a typical person who reads critically and thinks about what they are reading, and attempt to write in a way that makes sense for this “subject” which I construct from my own experiences as a 21st century citizen writing for whoever is “out there.”
This is better than pandering, i.e. writing for the lowest common denominator to get views and clicks. Sometimes on Facebook and other social media you see pretty smart people doing this. Social media makes us very lazy when it comes to rhetoric. It might be directly responsible for the very poor quality of our public discourse and public political discourse today. We don’t have to adapt, and we mistakenly confuse social media audiences for a “public.”
LiveJournal had all the good elements of social media and you could post publicly too. I really miss it. I will try to reform it here, making this a place to try to recover those norms of discourse from the earlier days of the internet.
Last time I drove regularly I had three options: FM radio, AM radio and a CD player. I would move between them depending on the drive, the trip, the feeling, the attitude – to use a Burkean word. I felt like I should be able to find something good I’d want to hear in my driving days.
Driving back and forth between Rochester and Syracuse, both in upstate New York, both in pretty much a straight line on the New York State Thruway from one another, I found myself having to adapt to the trip more than I would have liked. Mostly it’s because the song was not what I wanted to hear. Or it was a song that transported me somewhere – regret, decision, or wonder. Not where I wanted to be in my drive at all. Music has that power to take us elsewhere, without consent.
Some days no song was good enough, no radio talk interesting enough. Sometimes all my CDs didn’t have the song I wanted – what song did I want? Well, not any of these. Sometimes I was just tired and kept the radio on low, tolerating or enjoying whatever the mass-market music station played. I would listen to Howard Stern complain about the FCC as he prepared to transition to satellite radio. I’d listen to FM pop or AM NPR, and very often, stations that played classical or rock. Most of the time, you have to compromise with what you are hearing – you have to make do.
I put a CD player into my first car, a 1988 Ford Bronco 2, and in my second car I used a tape player adapter which was really great for the iPod, something I acquired in graduate school which was a bad idea at the time.
The iPod felt like total freedom. Thousands of songs were on there, so I could just hit shuffle and go. I would have nobody to blame but myself for the bad songs. After all, I put them all in there. The iPod became a subject, a DJ in the passenger seat from time to time, picking particular songs and particular orders of songs that simply angered me. The iPod was deliberately doing this to me to upset me. Why would it play these songs in this order? Why would it choose to do that?
The iPod also had a sense of humor. I remember driving around with some people that I wanted to impress, that I wanted to not only like me but think I was sophisticated (more than just sophistic, which they already knew). The iPod played the most amazing set. They asked: “What song is this?” “Who is this?” and then “This is incredible!” “What great music!” They all got out of the car, and as I started to drive away, the iPod chose to play the Johnny Cage Song from the Mortal Kombat soundtrack. Not the film mind you, the CD you could get by mailing off for it to an address that would appear on the video game screen between games. I dodged a bullet with that one and laughed a lot.
Now I have a car again, and I drive occasionally to Queens from distant Long Island. It’s quite the haul, so I’m glad I only have to do it a few times a semester. But now I have a smartphone and Spotify. Now it is possible to listen to virtually any music in the world that has ever been recorded.
This changes everything. The element of surprise or shock has been bleached by a perfect playlist, soundtrack, collection of hits, collection of albums, whatever I like. Spotify even has it’s own AI DJ, that will talk to you and play songs that it knows you won’t hate. It’s almost good enough to play only songs you like (maybe in a few more months). Soon, it will play songs you don’t know that you will love. We all become those friends in my car – “Who is this? This music is amazing, what a playlist!” But who are we praising? Ourselves? Spotify? Some kind of AI subject?
The danger is real though – no longer will one be driving and be reminded of that ex, that moment in life you’d forgotten, that embarrassing time at the dance or the bar – unless you really want that memory. The radio and the burned CD, or commercial CD that you forgot was in your car player, has the advantage of pushing you around through time as you commute around in your car. You are able to remember without willing it, feel things you haven’t in a long time, and wonder about other people who are now distant in your life. In short, you are forced to adapt your attitude based on the context that comes at you, without preparation or warning.
It’s great to think through a time a song reminds you of when you aren’t doing that much on the road. It also makes you think of things you might want to do later in the day with your free time, after your errands are done. It might make you want to reach out to someone as well.
Spotify erases all possibilities, it’s too perfect. You’ll only get what you want, and you can’t even complain about the limitless selection. I think Amazon Music is equally as good. Both are terrible in the car. It’s not good mind work to be paralyzed by what good song you’d like to hear. You don’t have to adapt anything, tolerate anything – you can skip tracks until you die (or your credit card declines).
Is this the future? Are all interstitial spaces going to be bespoke, crafted moments that we can’t possibly be frustrated with? Will there be no more boredom, downtime, practice tolerating what we don’t care for? What does that do for democratic systems? More importantly, what does that do to our ability to learn and grow? As the Tibetan Buddhists say, everything you encounter is your difficult teacher. Can a teacher really and truly offer anything you want to hear? Or would they be fired? Or unethical?
I also have an XM receiver in my car and that seems like some good methadone for what I miss, or what I need. But the sheer number of stations – many of which are dedicated to just one artist- suggests that we are all in for a perfectly curated, perfectly smooth experience when in transit. AI will be sure of that. What happens when Spotify and Sirius XM get a hold of your biodata from your watch? Can your respiration or pulse indicate what should or should not be playing?
There’s nothing like it. Bukowski really nailed it when he wrote about it. It’s my second day here at the Saratoga Public library doing some work and it’s overflowing with joy for me.
I’m in Saratoga Springs with my partner as she is here attending a state teacher’s meeting. I tagged along for support, good dinners, to fetch coffee from time to time, and to enjoy a new town together. But when she is in meetings, I have to find something to do. The public library is always a good choice, wherever you are.
The Saratoga Public Library on November 3, 2024
I like writing and working from home but this comes with a test of willpower: Can you stay seated, typing and reading, for a long enough time to get a boil going and then for the boil to actually cook anything properly? Chances are, no. There are myriad things to attend to at home such as cleaning, supplying the house, taking care of a whiny little dog, and various other chores. For example, today I spent a long time on the internet and the phone making doctor’s appointments (or trying to). This wasn’t the case when you are out of pocket and in a space reserved for a very specific kind of work – the work of words.
Charles Bukowski said it best about the library. For him it was a respite from the continuous torture he faced from his parents and from the other students at school. He would often skip and go to the public library instead where he would read a lot of the works that would inspire him to become one of the greats himself. He wrote a couple of odes to the library:
When I was dying of hunger and nobody wanted to publish me, I spent even more time in the library than I have ever since. It was wonderful to get a seat by a window in the sunlight where the sun could fill my head with music. (1965)
and from a poem “The Burning of the Dream” about the destruction of the library that saved him during high school:
it is
thanks to my luck
and my way
that this library was
there when I was
young and looking to
hold on to
something
when there seemed very
little about
The relationship with the library is a layered thing. It was for me a place to find fun books on a weekend, then it became a weapons plant – something like Q’s lab when James Bond is being equipped for a mission. Many summers I would be asked to be dropped at the public library in Lakeland, Florida when visiting my Dad. There wasn’t a lot to do that interested me so being there was great. I could read and listen to CDs. They had quite the collection. I could also just look at whatever book caught my attention.
High School debate brought about the weapons lab, where the library was transformed into a place to sharpen iron and learn new spells to cast against one’s opponents. A grimoire of potential magic words for debate became a place to then write my own, drawing from it to create depth and flow for my own writing from high school to college. Since graduate school to today, the library is the place I go first when crafting ideas. I draw as many books as I can from it and then see where they can take my words. So far, so good. I’ve written a lot, and I’ve written many things that I think people like. Although I haven’t really written anything that is at the level of moving attitude and feeling that I would like.
Practice with writing is essential and I don’t do it as often as needed. Finding a space to dedicate to it is hard. I think I’ll try my own library now that I’m home from my fun trip up north. Working in your own space is a bit more challenging as there are distractions galore and priorities that can easily dethrone the practice of writing. Trying to draw upon old books to find new ways to say (or cast) the magic words about takes energy and time, two things that capitalism does not like to share. You should be consuming! That consumption shouldn’t inspire you to create, but to consume more! It’s a formidable foe.
Tomorrow will be a trip to a new library to me to donate books. Even this can be a distraction from writing. Reading can be a distraction, although a significant amount of reading is needed to be able to write anything decent. The energy for this art is enormous. And we think AI drains energy. Think about how much you are fighting against to write just one simple paper for a class. Your mind wants to think about a ton of other things. You feel anxious about all the other things that need attention. And also, what are you trying to say? What do you want to say? What does the paper want to be? What does the audience (aka the teacher) want the paper to be?
It’s a lot and too much at once. One thing at a time. A place and a means and a mode are what are needed for practice. And the writing will never be very good. But it will be done and contribute to a future writing, a future engagement that maybe someone will like.