i posted a tirade about book burning in december 2008. this week i posted a flyer and announcement about a dj gig i recently acquired at the kenton pub in hackney. four months have passed in between these two events. for some reason i am compelled to account for that time.
i am not compelled to testify to some imaginary audience that might be reading this blog but i am compelled to testify to myself. i would like to reflect on the time that has passed as 'productive', or 'directed', or at least not as a total write off. and so i write frantically, attempting to excavate something from the silence that has pervaded my blog - and this certainly part of a larger pattern of simultaneous silences and supernovas in other parts of my life - for the past 16 weeks. making it public lends it some legitmacy that i need. permit me a bit of self indulgence here.
court is in session.
after a long trip home to canada in december and january, i returned to be completely swamped with preparation for upcoming conferences and a relocation of my long lost lover to london for march 1st. add one move to london and another trip to america for yet another conference, stir, and that almost brings us to the beginning of may. and yet, although i can submit this evidence in support of my unannounced virtual absence for the last third of a year*, i sense there is something else that has kept me away. or rather somethings.
#1. lack of inspiration or lack of perspiration?
i think this is either as a result of not sitting still long enough to develop a coherent thought (don't you just hate how transcontinental travel stifles your creative processes?), or because my engagement with ideas has been changing over the past half of a year. both my interests and my method of critique is morphing into a much more contemplative, dare i say stoic, approach. i have always been critical of my tendency to snarl my way in and out of debates, but recently i am much more (philosophically) interested in considering the limitations of such hostile, self-righteous techniques. and it is not a patronizing performace of tolerance that i am edifying here, but a genuine realization that i have been caught in a self-woven web of moral righteousness that offers intellectual security through intellectual stagnation. in other words, me and my brain have just signed up for a one-year subscription at the local YMCA. i hope they have rowing machines.
#2. fear?
some cliche deep inside me made me write this.
#3. time?
both time passing and not enough time. by 'time passing' i refer to that often referenced fear that 'too much time has passed' and now it is impossible to go back and set things right (i.e., rather than post four months late, it would be easier to just start a new blog, or to move to dubai, change your name, and when asked, refuse to ever acknowledge the existence of anything called 'the internet'). and, of course, there is the jessie spano syndrome, that not only speaks but sings, all of our deepest anxieties about never having enough time to devote to 'extra-curricular' activities.
all of these alibis are, of course, bogus and yet the stronghold they have on my inclination to write is fantastic. my explanations are fundamentally limited by the language i have to make sense of thoughts and feelings and as a result, will inherently be misrepresentative. this however, is inadmissable reasoning at a trial and so i will stick with my original alibi and hope that the performance of this ritual will clear the air of any bad feelings between myself and myself. besides, it is the ritual - not a hopeless attempt to define a genuine truthfulness behind my lack - that i need.
*converting months into their relative relationship to the overall year is a sure way to induce heart-stopping panic attacks.
