|
a messageboard is a problematic space for debate.
because we work within little boxes, we are forced to be clipped.
arguments get compressed.
tone becomes a function of compression.
even if you present alot of data, your interpretations are still clipped.
whatever you write, then, appears closed off.
and maybe it is closed off, but i think the source of this is the impression generated by the parameters of this form of communication.
so it doesnt really matter what you are like as a person, how you think or operate: it all drops away behind the effects of compression.
so you cant tell what folk are like in a debate space.
you can pretend you know, but you dont.
there are other spaces available via this board (journals in particular) where you can get a better sense of folk simply because there's more room to move, to play around, to do stuff.
but they are also spaces of monologue.
anway, i understand to some extent why art would opt for the style that he now works with.
the thing with this koan approach is that you have to be really precise (in my view anyway).
the problem with that kind of precision is that there is no reason to expect that people are reading for it. so they dont see it.
experience has shown this.
i generally work a meta-game. try to talk about the framework within which an argument functions and in doing that turn it back on itself. or a variation of this, depending on the situation. in the end, there is little difference between this and the koan approach--compressed because of the little box effect, you are forced to be very precise.
precision + compression=> shorthand.
shorthand+compression=>obscurity.
obscurity+variable modes of reading/attention=> get ignored.
the problem with working a metagame is that there is little surprising in what people say. generally, it seems that folk work with strict procedures, whether they realize it or not. if you work out the procedures, what they will say follows almost inevitably. so your options: dont play the metagame. personally, i do it because it is at this point kinda automatic. the fact that it is automatic is not necessarily always pleasing. but i am a result of my background, and a significant part of my background condenses onto a particular way of reading and that way of reading is geared around isolating the meta-game. so it is neither better or worse than any other mode of reading: it is more efficient in some ways, and problematic in others. and it is how i think. so it's just like that. if i am going to interact with someone's writing, that's how it will go.
over time, this viewpoint is not alwasy a happy place because it opens onto repetition. much of what i see is repetition. and much of that repetition tends toward stasis.
and stasis is boring.
responses to stasis are themselves static.
and static is boring.
often is seems that nothing moves in a space of such compression because, well, it is the nature of the beast.
when do folk use this place? if they are wedging it in to their regular day gig, then it is a little oasis. you cut out of one routine and into another one. you say your bit and you leave. at another time, you do the same thing. this pattern is not about movement in the context of the oasis itself--it isnt geared that way--its about cutting out of the daygig space and allowing yourself to write in a way that is not about the constrictions of the daygig.
and there's nothing at all wrong with that: it's just the nature of the beast.
i expect that everyone who posts at all is curious about things at one level or another: curious about issues in the world, curious about what people make of them.
if they weren't, why would they bother with this kind of space?
__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
|