your silence most offends me. by definition of this craft, i am obligated - personally contracted, i think - to be frank with you. i won't make any joe or george jokes for fear of alienation, and also because i'm female. but the truth is, sometimes it's hard. sometimes i sit down to the little laptop keyboard, breathe in deeply and try to forget that there is a specific audience i'm catering to; as in all good performances, the performer must keep her witnesses in mind as she goes. a flurry of fingers scaling over inanimate buttons plugging pixelated squiggles to represent the sounds in these words, alphabet's condemnation by Plato is nothing now with this impersonal technology and virtual bunk. his worry was wax tablets; my worry is cyberspace. i have so much to say and so little time to say it; your attention span just about ends in another paragraph or so, and then you'll jump back to other blogs, your online newspaper subscription, coffee nearly spilt on the precious inanimate buttons. with so little time, my truth often gets muddy from fear and greasy fingerprints and figurative obsessive compulsive disorder. everything must be perfect; the stage is set, you are primed for today's topic. will i tell you what i really mean to say?

this insecurity in speech, in communication rising up between angry journalists with formal training, the "ultimate proof of democracy," this is regular. i am one of millions. it's how it is in cities, in all Life - we'll capitalize it, make it a cereal - we are one body amongst millions. in reality, this online universe doesn't exist. all we have to show for it are billions of tiny dots to make up pictures. printers running out of ink, fading the writing as the barrel flicks back and forth like a cubic hummingbird: it cannot keep up. this is nothing. where is the truth? it's running around outside my window. my view into other buildings, lit up windows with bodies moving in and out of view, eating or smoking or naked or yelling. there is nothing more than this, nothing more than man-made constructions to hold us, bricks and mortar, gypsum and plaster and cement and awful white paint. it's not the refrigerator or the desk or the 5-foot screen TV or the Jaguar ("my wife always wanted one..") that's being protected by those walls. it's the human. it's the being running about, passing me without a word, one with a nervous system, a circulatory system, a digestive system. that Starbucks is going to go somewhere, and so is mine. if a piano were to drop on that body's head, it would hurt just as much as if it were my head. we have no Hercules walking among us, no one so different.

this truth is humbling. it's not my truth; it's yours. it's both of ours. i am here to write these words that will reach bodies that essentially work the same as mine. i am here to write my truth, my thoughts, my honest opinions and my genuine passion. these things i deliver to you, virtual red bows tied up around my thoughts. a present of nothing, of dots on your computer screen. you see that this is pressure. with each passing moment, i am risking a lost audience member, someone not quite catching my drift, someone unable to hear or understand the opportunity for mistakes. for erring. for throwing too much stock into this craft that - let's face it - i almost don't deserve. it isn't about the wax tablets, it's about the intangibility. it's about a nonexistent journalism degree. it's about my sitting down to music that i love, and want you to love too. and so i flurry along these buttons and hope you'll cast your gaze across the squiggles i produce. and i silently ask, do you love it? and there can ever only be silence back.  shan  7:37 AM  |  view comments (3)