photo by Lindsay Beyerstein
I understand that I haven't been writing much on this blog. I've been commenting here and there, and posting some over at [Post] Artblog.net, but mostly I've been reactive, not actually active. You poke me, I poke back, but otherwise, I just stay settled down in the mud. I've been working sporadically on the follow-up to my Imaginary Gallery and I really should be writing up my reviews of a few shows I've seen. But the going is slow.
Why is this? Every day I go down my list of art-related blogs and I skim the new postings but what I keep hearing in my head, tolling like a bell, is just this: I don't care. I don't care. I don't care.
I don't know why I don't care right now. I simply don't. Maybe that's what separates the professionals from the amateurs -- the professionals give a crap on deadline. Certainly the blogs I've been checking in with have continued churning out pointless posts at professional clip. Blah blah blah Deitch, blah blah blah Skin Fruit, blah blah blah "anonymous comments on the blog lately have not been about building a comment community". Lately? Seriously? Is this 1998 that you just figured this out? More late-breaking news: The obvious is still obvious!
I don't even have the heart to list recent stupidities on the art blogs. None of them have been all that egregious anyway. Minor stupidities hardly count. The good writers are backing off -- Franklin quit and Bunny's been quiet, at least on strictly art-related topics -- and the bad ones, well, they just keep on truckin', don't they? It's like a Yeats poem, but less exciting. Not with a bang, but with a whimper, right?
I'm trying to care. Really I am. It's just not working.
This post saddened me Chris.
Yeah, although I see where you're coming from, it kinda makes me feel like crap for reading with interest (like, "why are you reading this? Don't you know blogs are over and I don't care anymore!?!")...and while it may be true that a good blogger like Franklin has quit, that doesn't mean b/c you haven't quit means you've been left behind...not that you said that, exactly, but there's an air of "the incompetents trudge one, while the greats move on" in the post...and you're wondering if by not moving on you haven't missed the bus.
Anyway, if you write something, I'll read it. With interest. But now I'm taking my kid on the Staten Island Ferry for the 1st time...
Have fun on the Ferry. I took that every school day for three years. A lot of times it was so crowded there were no seats, even on the stairs. I'd sit on the floor with my friends. In the winter sometimes I'd think I could sit outside, give it a try for a few minutes, and realize, yes, there's a reason no one else is sitting outside. I don't think the modern Staten Island Ferry boats even have an outside any more, which is a shame.
One time I went to school without sleeping -- I'd stayed up all night at a friend's house. Halfway through school the next day I realized I couldn't make it, I had to go home early. So I got on the ferry to go home. Now, the ferry takes half an hour. I stayed awake the whole way across but slipped off into sleep just before the boat docked in Staten Island. Then I woke with a start, shambled to the end of the ship, and waited to dock. It took a few minutes for me to realize the dock was getting smaller, not bigger, because we were moving away from it. I'd missed getting off! That meant I had to sit for another hour to get back to Staten Island! Manfully I stayed awake for the next hour. It was torture. It felt like a week. Then -- really -- I fell asleep just before we reached the dock in Staten Island again. When I woke up, I'd missed getting off again. Another hour! This time, when the boat got to Manhattan, all my friends from school got on. I'd managed to waste the whole school day riding the ferry back and forth. They kept me awake so I was able to finally get off in Staten Island.
Coincidentally, my son is in Staten Island today on a camping trip with the Boy Scouts.
Anyway. I'm not saying blogs are over or dead or anything. Just that, at the moment, for me, nothing interesting is happening. This seems to happen to me right about this time of year every year. April and May are big months for art galleries but for some reason I get really apathetic around now.
I just meant that you wasted a perfectly good opportunity to plug my awesome blog. You know, I rub your back by commenting here, etc., and you rub my back by posting a link to my blog, or commenting on something I have done. Come on man. Get with the art blogger agenda.
I hear you. Welcome to the age of discontent and apathy. That picture says it all.
In other news: do you know a better commenting system other than Disqus, Intense debate, or js-kit(fee-based but looks good?) I want something as simple as what artblog.net had.
Sorry, Eric. I should've mentioned that you backed off, too, except, now that I think about it, you probably won't really back off. You'll say you're quitting, and you might even mean it, but then you'll come back. Because you can't stay away! I just saw today that you're going to write something else for Art Critical. Ha! We keep dragging you back in!
Everyone, go read EAG's blog. He's been posting some drawings and plenty of music, too.
Lucas: As far as commenting systems go, I just use the one that comes with Movable Type. It works fine. What's wrong with the default Blogger system? I used that for years. The only reason I ever left Blogger was Google decided one day to shut down my access to the blog. They claimed there was a problem with the system and they had so many complaints it was going to take them weeks to get through the backlog, so I just ditched them and never looked back. But until then Blogger was fine. What don't you like about it?
Am I an expert at milking compliments or what? Nothin' better than emotional blackmail. Keep it up Chris, regardless of the fact that so much out there sucks. Oh and thanks for calling my sound aberrations music. I am touched.
I don't mean to be a dick but it doesn't seem worthwhile to wait around until the art blogs you typically peruse get really awful again so that you can get "excited" about blogs again. Artblog.net is gone, probably forever, so you won't be able to contribute there any longer. But you do have a decent size audience for your own blog so you either create content for them or you don't. People tend to stop visiting blogs once they sit dormant for a few months. Most of your audience will fade through time. Random links might bring people to your blog as long as the URL stays live. Personally, I think my blog has reached the saturation point. It won't get bigger, ever. So I either face that reality and move on, or I make due with the small audience I currently have.
I don't really mean to wait around for the other art blogs to get interesting, either in a good or bad way. I intend to create content for my own site. I just haven't yet. It's not quite writer's block, but it's similar. I have things I want to write about -- a couple of shows and then continuing my Imaginary Gallery -- but I guess right now they're not compelling enough for me to start. Also, for two weeks I had one or the other kid home for Spring Break and that cut into my writing time.
What I find kind of agonizing is knowing that, the more I don't write, the more audience I lose. And yet I don't want to post just to hold on to the audience, because if I post something lousy, I'll lose them anyway. It's very frustrating.
Quality control is a good thing but not if it completely stifles you.
Blogger's comment system would open a new window and it annoyed me. (they might do inline comments now).
Blogger has two settings. You can set it to open a new window or not.
I was not aware of that. I'd have to uninstall disqus but not sure how to do it.
I really like this photo! It reminds me of Merlin Carpenter's (no relation) recent work, except better.
I just looked up Merlin Carpenter. What crap.