|
i am very aware that roachboy is a persona that changes as the sentences i ---the other guy, the one who is at best partially here----write change.
if folk read what roachboy says, the sentences hedge round a kind of empty space that shape projections about who he is.
based on those projections, they may choose to think him a nice enough fellow or not.
in a way, this is not so different from doing music performances: people see me on stage and impute elements of the person they imagine to me. i often have no idea how this works or what the basis for it is--all i know is that doing experimental/improvisational music live generates the impression that i am quite a different person than i am most of the time--more a zen monk, more quiet and distant.
i kind of like the distance. i do a journal here that is mostly about the world as roachboy sees it, which is different from how i see it. it is also not different from how i see it. roachboy is and is not me.
based on this, i dont really see net communities as viable social spaces--i dont see them as other than viable either---they are spaces where versions of people can interact---they are a kind of like a curious game in which you can lead with those aspects of yourself that you like best and that you translate most easily into sentences. you may feel restricted in 3-d life in comparison for any number of reasons. particularly if you are self-conscious about your body for whatever reason, or if you are simply shy.
caveat: i have only met one person in real life from tfp and that right after a performance (i was in a daze)---artelevision was not at all as i had imagined him to be, based on a fleeting and highly mediated interaction. but that was fine--i was curious to get to know this other person and about how the one i kind of know through sentences relates to the one that deploys in 3-d.
best thing i can say about tfp is that it activates similar curiousity more often than not.
__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
|