A conversation with you...and myself

It's been running on three weeks now since I've written a new blog post, and sitting here now, typing away I can't help but wonder...is it the lack of wanting to finish reading that bizarre book assigned for my English class? Or is it the lack of roommates milling around the apartment? Or just the fact that somewhere in the back of my mind, in a neglected and rusted drawer, the weight of cummulating ideas is making the floorboards creak without the touch of a foot, or has even caused the drawer itself to spring open with a curdling metallic shriek, pinning me to my chair before my laptop as ideas tumble out on dog-eared pages and thick folders spit out their contents as if they were holding them in until the right moment.

Whatever the reason, I cannot deny a simple fact, that being the lack of comments I receive on my blog responding to each post. Now obviously I'm no buzz-worthy blogger in the least, but I'm sure any run-of-the-mill blogger would appreciate a few comments here and there. It becomes disheartening when you add blog post after blog post...and nothing in return. It's like a professor standing before a chalkboard, the white dust falling steadily from the nubby piece of chalk as his sweeping arm mimics his thunderous voice raising to the cavernous roof of the lecture hall, the board is lost in a blur of hand and steady cursive. Then he turns around, his chest rising and falling with the same intoxicating passion that catapulted him through his undergraduate years, smile as wide as the chalkboard stretching behind him like a sacred stone, inscribed with the words of his very heart, its porous facade embedded with the sweat and tears of his work, his unspoken worries, his...he realizes all the students have fallen asleep, their head and shoulders slumped against their seats, books lying askew, upside down, on the floor, or perilously close to the edge, or their pages left to flap in the wind slipping through the window. Is the wind all that cares what I have to say, he wonders? Is it the only voice left that will listen and respond? Perhaps I shall lecture to the wind then.

Now I understand, there may be a good deal of people who do in fact read my blog posts, and just don't care or bother to respond. But I guess what I have come to understand about myself is that I need concrete evidence of that. Am I then asking for comments? Perhaps. Or is there a bigger question looming out there like stumbling into an empty room and immediately sensing that the crowding, intrusive darkness is hiding walls and a ceiling arching high above you, only they're right against your skin, crawling up your back with their sheer volume, their lofty height. What is this bigger question you ask? Is it that of, with the lack of feedback on my blog posts, why do I bother blogging at all? I'm sure there are plenty of other outlets I could scrounge behind furniture and along the lengths of baseboards for. Why does it always have to be this outlet? Because, even with the lack of comments, I still love blogging. There is something about seeing an idea, a seed from the endless labyrinth of filing cabinets in my mind, planted amongst the old-fashioned background and other posts, and unfurl from the cloudy soil I have formed it into...and become something I can look back on, and smile, and perhaps even gain further inspiration from.

Perhaps the lack of feedback also has to do with what I write about, which obviously always invariably comes back to writing. Which as I've mentioned before in other blog posts, is something I don't ever intend to deliberately change. For just like I always come back to writing, and music, and photography, and old houses, and the countryside...there are others who devote their own blogs solely to a cluster of things: home decorating, cooking, cleaning, children...the list could go on. And just as these subjects thrive on blogs, and obtain cult followings, why I ask, can't my own blog? After all, it's been surfing the endless waters of the Internet since I started attending college, way back in good ol' 2008! And might I just add that such a fact makes me feel a trifle old. Yes, folks, I did just use the word old to describe myself, but only in the reflective sense that it'll be going on three years since I graduated high school, and in June of next year most of the people I graduated with...will be graduating college! So, how's that for perspective on old?

But, not surprisingly, I digress. Honestly, the idea is lost on me how I market my blog in order to reach out to the audience of blog-followers that love the things my blog thrives on. Now I know I haven't really taken any lengths to customize it like some of the bloggers I follow, and the honest answer to that is...I simply haven't learned how! Which might strike you as a little ridiculous, but I guess I never saw any point in it. My shabbyblogs.com background is more than enough customization, if you will. And after all, it shouldn't be the mere look of my blog that draws people to it.

Perhaps I'm over thinking this whole 'traffic-for-my-blog' thing. But I guess the main root I'm digging at is this: after some of my blog posts, I address my readers, thanking them for reading my blog posts, and for commenting - yes, it does happen occasionally - but recently I feel like such accolades are addressed to the wind flapping the pages of a slumbering student's textbook, or to the slumbering student body itself. In other words, to no one. Sometimes I feel like no one reads my blog, thus providing an answer to the lack of comments. Which brings up another question then: who exactly am I posting these blog posts for if no one is in fact reading my blog?

That answer, as it turns out, is easy. If I am in fact addressing no one when I thank my blog readers, then I am more or less writing for myself. After all, eons ago when I discussed my blatant love - and near obsession for - heavy, minute details in my novellas, I'm not providing such detail for the benefit of the reader, but am in fact trying to please that nagging, and prodding child within my mind...my imagination. You see, whenever I am in the troughs of a scene in a novella, it comes to life in full color and three-dimensions in my mind, like I'm writing the script for a movie and watching it unfold on the theatre screen right before me. Consequently, with such scenes playing out before the unblinking eye of my mind, I somehow feel responsible to portray every minute detail of those scenes, otherwise I'll have failed both myself and the reader. And not to mention said reader will not receive the full content of the scene the way I have, and part of the story will be lost on them.

I've learned, through this, that there's such a thing as detail-overload, and I'll be the first to admit I've breached that long-standing fact more than once in my writing life. But, you ask, if I am in fact writing for myself, then why write a blog post enquiring about the lack of feedback? Because...writing for myself becomes tiring after a while. It's like replacing a billboard alongside a rutted dirt road doggedly meandering to an abandoned mountainous town. Every time you climb up the ladder and slap on the new poster, glancing surreptitiously at the sunken and slumbering town below you ask yourself "what's the point"? I'm the only one who will ever see this billboard, and its being here certainly won't benefit the company it's advertising any.

Before I get caught up in a slew of images and metaphors I'll end today's post here. And just for spite, here's another unsurprising revelation for you: I ended up talking about something in a total other hemisphere than what I wrote in the title box at the beginning. Sometimes I think I do that just as a dare to myself, to see if I can in fact really stay on track, or will I swerve from one set of tracks to another like a train giddy with all the possibilities.

Fragments of song

I've always thought that my mind is like a person speeding along the highway, flicking through the stations on the radio dial, barely giving any song a chance, listening to only fragments of song, a hearty laugh, an all-out guitar solo or heated political discussion. Each station flicking by underneath his fingers is just enough to register with him, and he either rejects it or settles back into his seat, listening to whatever he's dubbed as acceptable.

So, you ask, how does this relate back to my mind in any way? Well, let me put it this way. A couple of nights ago I had just pulled the sheets tight around me, sealing out the nighttime chill of my bedroom when a fragment of a song entered my mind. It, of course, was heedless of the hour, or the fact that I would be more than a little reluctant to rouse myself from bed to transfer it from a wispy thought in my mind to solid, sloppy-cursive like words onto paper. But it was the fear of forgetting it in the morning, and only able to grasp a few words, versus a full refrain or chorus that propelled me from my bed. It is interesting that such a minuscule, disjointed thought would be enough to reel in my ancient ship from the calm, crystalline waters of my dreams like a gentle but persistent tide pushing it backwards.

Why, I have always wondered, do such things come to be in the nightly hours? Now, not to worry, I won't go all paranormal on you, or however you want to phrase it, but I've noticed that's how it has always been with me. A while back I even put the thought to paper and wrote a poem about how I seem to hit a particularly sweet spot for writing around midnight or either close to it or after. Is it the fact that while the rest of the world slumbers, my mind is awake and dashing gleefully over that never-ending literary field, giggling wildly at the free, darkly cloaked space, at the lack of a probing sun but an indifferent moon to take its place? Whatever the reason, I am grateful for these fragments of song, for they can be like a single glass doorknob lying amongst the charred or gutted ruins of an antique Victorian taken by fire or storm. The bigger piece may be missing, and some may dismiss it, but I and others who care to grasp the doorknob see something valuable. That doorknob is a starting point, a single thread left upon the intricate quilt it had once been a part of.

After all, all I need to start a short story, or for a poem to blossom in my mind is a single glimpse of an old house alongside a highway, or nestled amongst historical storefronts or standing alone amidst a humble clearing of a forest. Perhaps I am granted these fragments of song because my mind realizes that my imagination needs only such a small amount, for it will do the rest.

And in the case of that proverbial radio dial, I will forever continue to search the dial, for there is always something to learn, something to grasp, something to build into a work bigger than myself. May all my fellow writer's and artists out there continue to search the dial as well.