Why I am blogging

Photo by Flickr user Pengster

There is a an outstanding moment in Proust's In Search of Lost Time where Marcel describes in detail the morning on which he opens the daily newspaper (I think it is Le Figaro) to find that his first article has, at long last, been published. I do not have the book to hand, so I cannot quote it directly. There subsequently follows one of Marcel's characteristically lengthy ruminations, in which he compares the arrival of this morning newspaper to the arrival of fresh bread, still warm from the press. He also describes the way in which, somewhat anxiously, he reads and re-reads the article numerous times, each time through the eyes of a different imagined observer. How favourably, or not, would he be judged by each of these scrutinising eyes? Hasn't every writer felt those piercing eyes?

These days, the arrival of this fresh daily bread has been replaced for many people by the world of ceaselessly updating 'breaking news', which is now often channelled straight to one's desktop or mobile phone. Aside from the distinct possibility that we might thus be receiving a lot of 'half-baked' news, there are nevertheless undoubted benefits to this era where we are fast approaching instantaneous communication. There is a very good reason why blogging has some appeal to me, typically a bit of a techno-sceptic, and this is its promise to enable a kind of 'thinking out loud' or 'thought in process' to exhibit itself. One of the limitations of the printed word is that once the book or article is off the press then it necessarily enters the realm of the 'said'. That is, of the static, the ordered and the immutable. It cannot be 're-said' or 'unsaid'. At least, not until a second edition appears.

However, there is in a blog the intriguing possibility to catch on the fly those changes, shifts and inflections of thought that move us from day to day. There is the potential to go back and re-say what you said the first time, based upon new the information, insight or comments you have received. Of course, actual face-to-face conversation is still clearly peerless for this, but for those of us who feel more comfortable with the written word, the blog becomes a valuable asset. It can, in a sense, keep thought and writing 'alive' - which is certainly not to say that it makes printed material and the synchronicity this represents superfluous. There is, after all, nothing like the texture and smell of a 'real' book.

Anyway, the purpose of this post is really to act as a prelude of sorts to the next one, in which I intend to return to the idea of home and to 're-say' it through the lens of displacement and exile. There are a number of reasons why what I have so far said about home could be seen by some as problematic. For starters, it could be remarked that I have treated home as a somewhat innocuous and even nurturing term, but there are fairly obvious reasons why some might not see home in such a rosy light. Neither have I touched on the issue of what 'home' might mean to those who have been displaced, exiled or have simply led a life of self-chosen itinerancy. I have in fact been aware of these issues as I have been writing and it has always been my intention to focus on them in due course. It may be that doing so will require some re-saying or even un-saying of what I have said previously. It is not that what I have said previously is incorrect. The problem stems from the simple fact that there is precisely always some things left unsaid. We can never say everything.

One thing is clear- we can never be sure where our thoughts are going to lead us, and as such there is an inevitable vulnerability inherent to thinking. This is a vulnerability that is actually increased in exposing thought in a blog in this way- raw, as it were. But I have always been of the opinion that there isn't much point in writing if nobody gets to read it...