For those of you who may stumble upon my blog:
You may think less of me. You may call me a hypocrite. You may think me a phony. I, who have spoken out against using technology to fashion a "self"; I, who have refused to partake of the technological opportunities given to me by this modern world (still no cell phone, no Facebook); I, who purport to be some spiritual, wholesome environmentalist - here I am indoors, using artificial light to punch out a blog post.
Perhaps you thought I'd write in beautiful, swirling script in an eco-friendly moleskin.
Perhaps you thought I'd write about the world, the soul, the universe.
Perhaps I fooled you into thinking I was some kind of selfless altruist, my mind and heart full of care for others.
And here I am blogging. Blogging about myself, no less. Fooling myself into thinking anyone would care about me writing about myself, no less.
This is a new side of the girl you thought you knew. I'm not strong enough to show this side to the "real world", of course. And there you have my first confession; this is my space to be a coward. This is my space to be broken, to be imperfect, to struggle. This is my space to be FREE. Free of the expectations you've set for me/I've set for myself. This is my space to be self-indulgent. To be adolescent. To have the audacity to believe my silly songs and muddled musings are worth a damn. And the wise woman wisdom to know they're worth everything.
Friday, January 18, 2013
Ancestors, Greatness, and the Blessed Mediocrity of Today
Sometimes I think about how our ancestors had to work to immortalize themselves. They had to to be great people, live great lives, do great things. It was so easy to be forgotten. Their lives were a struggle against the relentless eraser that is the passage of time. They had to claw their way into history books, into the stories passed down by their tribes, onto pieces of pressed papyrus. And if you were poor? Forget it. To immortalize oneself was man's essential quest (think Gilgamesh). Simultaneously imperative and impossible, immortalizing oneself looked like a lifetime of striving and proving and rising to some perceived top of some perceived hierarchy...
And here I am immortalizing myself on the internet. Not because I'm great, or have lived a great life, or have done anything great. On the contrary, I am a very standard, very average teenage girl who happens to write songs, who happens to have no shame, who happens to have the audacity to post them for total strangers to listen to. But don't be fooled by my boldness - I would never play for the people that make up my life. Hiding behind this screen, I am taking advantage of the luxury of anonymity. Anonymity: the easy way out.
My ancestral sisters (for whom it was even more difficult to be remembered!): immortalized because they did great things, stood up for great causes, lived great lives.
Me: immortalized in a web of pixels they call the internet because I'm too timid to sing for real people.
Ancestral sisters: 1; Me: 0.
Lucky I don't believe in keeping score!
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)