Bob's Journeys
2011
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Why I (don’t) Write
Tuesday, January 03, 2012
Despite its outwardly moribund appearance, this blog is not yet completely dead. However, I have to confess that after many attempts, reinvigorating this space has proved a little painful.
During its incarnation as an exploration of music and memory it managed to hold my attention fairly persistently. However, the experience of writing and publishing a book taught me something - while writing a blog was a useful rehearsal for a larger work, it is not the same thing. No matter how profound your writing, putting it on-line for free is a fast track to critical irrelevance.
Having embarked upon a second book, one more about St. John's and the weird hold it has on so many imaginations, (not least, my own), it seems nuts to spoil the dinner by putting the material out in a free snack tray. Also, many of the pieces for that book have been or are in the process of being published in the Newfoundland Quarterly. While that magazine has a limited circulation, and is rarely seen outside Newfoundland itself, it does have the virtue of existing in tangible written form. While those at Slate and elsewhere would argue the point, I have found that it makes a difference.
'What about the regular travel stuff, then', one might ask. Where are the rapturous odes to Paris, the penetrating explorations of Brantford, or snide remarks about Orlando? Well, to be honest, since the summer, I have not really gone anywhere that interesting. I have been to Toronto a few times, but it would take a more creative mind then mine to make something out of those trips - neither one was for more then 24 hours, and in neither case did my journey extend more then a few kilometers from my downtown hotel. I saw no interesting museums, ate at hotel restaurants renowned for nothing except convenience, bought nothing more interesting then a new briefcase, and talked to no one outside my immediate circle. From such encounters are very boring books written. I was in Halifax a couple of times as well, again, for less then 12 hours on both occasions. I didn't hear so much as a fiddle tune on either trip, and other then to speculate on why I am repeatedly subjected to fourth level searches in YHZ security, I could not think of a thing to say about them. I was also in Moncton for 8 hours a few weeks ago, but that trip was also accomplished in less then a day, and the only incident of even remote interest was an annoying highway detour that added two hours to the drive. Summer trips could have been interesting, but circumstances just led me in circles. Late gigs and travel snafus meant that I was in Lisbon for two days, which was just plain ridiculous. Our band trip to the Colorado Rockies offered a few possibilities, but it was instead punctuated by me somehow acquiring altitude sickness. Hard to make profound observations while lying on a hotel bed barking like a seal and nursing a brutal headache. While personal illnesses are pretty consuming in the moment, they are hardly the stuff of exhilarating literature...
Perhaps the whole blog thing in general is in trouble; a survey of my browsers' links recently led me to this conclusion. A few years ago I regularly followed a dozen good blogs, but these days most of them have drained away, or been reduced to photo and link postings. Facebook has become unbearably dull, and google+ way too much trouble for anyone either employed or older then 17. For news, shameless self-promotion and general verbiage, Twitter makes a worthy vehicle. 'To everything there is a season', as Ecclesiastics would say, and the day of the blog may have ended.
A new vehicle may have to pull into the creative driveway. Maybe it is indeed finally time to really get to work on that narrative poem linking the seal hunt, black rum, Joey Smallwood and my Grade 11 class.
