So it's been a year. For definite, congratulations are in order: there are many, many ideas that we as a group have considered, entertained, or even briefly pursued before abandoning, and while there have been long dead stretches here at the Chorography, we're somehow still pumping away (albeit with the consistency and frequency of a faulty pacemaker). I am proud of us for this, even if it is a flawed accomplishment: in a year of flawed accomplishments and significant disappointments, both political and personal, it's nice to know we've kept up with the zeitgeist.In saying that, I don't want to diminish what we've accomplished here. We've managed to set up and maintain a space to vent our spleens at and with each other from afar, something we used to do up close. I think I've become a better writer over the last year as a result, and I don't think I'm alone. It's just that this little retrospective, which I had originally intended to be fairly analytical and dispassionate, has gotten kind of personal. The more I look back over what we've written, the more I see the directions our lives have taken in the last year. There are the obvious lulls in posting, where one or all of us was in some sort of big transition or trip or move; the frustrated rants, some of which only flimsily cover up something larger and deeper; and the long, obviously time-consuming posts, the kind one could only put together with some real unemployment on one's hands. This isn't to say we weren't writing real good stuff, the kind we should scavenge and poach from mercilessly, just that it's not easy to look at a post from, say, August, knowing where we all were at the time (physically, on a lake; mentally, in a rut), and not think more about that than about the contents of the post.
Anyway, we've done good things here. We should keep doing good things here. This blog is a good thing for us as friends and a good thing for us as thinkers. We should engage each other more on the blog than we have so far: our opinions tend to converge on most things but when they diverge it has made for some solid stuff (see Lion v. everyone on New York v. Montreal). We should start thinking about, in a glacial way, how we can (and whether we even want to) make this something people who aren't us will read. Most importantly, we should just write more. If you look back through the months, there are long dry spells followed by sudden bursts of heavy posting. My guess is that, when other people are posting, we're more inclined to do the same. When they aren't, we aren't. Kind of a Catch-22, but the only real solution is to just start posting more. We've done a, if not amazing, then at least admirable, job of keeping this sucker afloat during a turbulent and confusing period in our lives. Who knows, maybe it gets easier from here.
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Hear, hear! When the idea was first floated, I never would have predicted we'd still be chugging away, however irregularly, one year later. Good on us.
ReplyDeleteThe clustering of posts is definitely something I've noticed as well and something I agree we ought to work on smoothing out. I for one am much more inspired to post if I feel as if I'm not posting into a great comment-less void. Also, and this is maybe more personal, I always feel obligated to go the extra-yard beyond a blurb at the end of a block-quote, which unfortunately translates into 8,000 word treatises that are not necessarily better thought out. But my point is that the energy and time I unnecessarily require of myself serves as a deterrent.
So I may start working more on upping the quantity on my end, even if that means more linking and less thinking, and hope that, by triggering the feedback mechanism of posts written in response to posts, I will occasionally happen upon some quality too.
That's what I say, anyway.
If I could afford champagne, or even champale, I would crack a cold one give myself a bubbly victory spray. Here's to many more years, gents, wherever we may end up.
ReplyDeleteIt's been proposed in different and usually more focused forms before, but we might consider branching out of our current model, which seems news cycle-dependent and is thus constrained by the inconsistent manifestation of topics that interest us. I'm trying to get myself to a point where I can plan out legitimate essays, which, though time-heavy, might end up more coherent than most of the rants and gut-reactions that I know I'm prone to (see aforementioned Lion vs. everyone on New York vs. Montreal).
We could also hash out more ways that we can collaborate with each other. Comments have been the closest we've come to that, and while they are significant as positive critiques, they do have the tendency to disappear down the rabbit hole given enough time (the rabbit hole being homoeroticism, with the rabbit in the role of a dick and the hole being, well, res ipsa loquitor). It's not easy since we're all at a distance, but I know that, at least for myself, writing is something that I'm pursuing for the long-term. That being the case, any and all exercises in collaboration could only do me, us, and the anticipated reading public good.
Inevitably, time will always be a constraint. I suppose that, in the end, no tricks will substitute for willpower. It's too easy to fall into the glibness of repost + commentary. But hey, we've made it this far, and we've done so with some very solid results under some pretty uncertain circumstances. I don't doubt that we've got what it takes.