So this evening I return to London and have to face up to my life, find a job, do some washing and think about “the future”. As I’m sure you can all imagine, returning to rain and responsibility is something that I look forward to with all my heart, and without the slightest trace of resentment or depression. I’d like to thank Sean, Kerry, Anna, Ralph and everyone else I’ve bumped into while in LA for a lovely time. See you all soon…
The most popular super-hero team in the world (and stars of their own recent movie) are now to be written by Grant Morrison, a drug-crazed magician-abductee from Scotland and writer of the seminal Invisibles. See what they will look like: here.
Just in case you’re having difficulty tracing the time-lines of what I’m getting up to here, bear in mind that while plasticbag.org is currently working on GMT, I am not. Hence two posts in one day saying “Last night I did this….”
Last night I went to this LA gay bar called ‘Rage’ where there was an event called ‘Varsity’ where anyone over the age of eighteen can get in (although clearly they can’t drink). In England, of course, this wouldn’t be an issue. And as I pointed out to someone, it’s no use having new people around if you aren’t allowed to get them drunk enough to have sex with you. Still – at least they looked pretty.
People here seem fascinated by my accent, by which I suppose I mean my lack of accent. Last time I was in LA a waiter asked me, “Is that an accent?”. I replied of course, “No”. Last night this bloke said that he, “really liked foreigners” (a strange thing to say at the best of times), to which I replied, “you should – you are one”. I’m more than aware that this is why English people are cast as the evil people in movies, but nonetheless it’s very entertaining.
So here am I – 28, crumbly and creased – untanned, ageing and flatulent, in a city of ten thousand million buff bodies and perfect smiles. What’s a boy to do?
Thanks to all the Los Angeles residents and visitors from barbelith.com who kept me entertained yesterday, especially to Ralph who was particularly entertaining. Experience the thrill of the after-meet glow over on the Underground – and pass me a cigarette while you’re over there, will you?
Sean, one of my hosts in LA, has produced a great Flash movie that will shortly be doing the rounds of everyone’s office PCs. It’s a splice of a recent Brit-movie favourite and an esteemed horror classic. I’m going to see if I can get someone to host it for him in the long term – but in the short-term I might see if I can stick it on plasticbag.org – more information as I have it…
Ok – it’s occurred to all of us at one time or another – weblogging is based upon the presumption of authenticity – people actually writing about their own lives. But this presumed authenticity is almost certainly to a greater or lesser extent a fantasy – while I’m sure most webloggers don’t lie about their lives, I’d be surprised if people were not selectively choosing what to write about in such a way that would alter people’s perceptions of their life.
So I’m sure it’s occurred to many of us at certain times to set up fictional weblogs – to generate completely articificial online personae. I know that it’s occurred to Matt and Nick because they’ve both talked about it with me. But what no one has yet talked about is undertaking weblogs of already established fictional characters. I mean – it would be a tremendous fan site for Buffy to have a weblog ostensibly maintained by Willow, with links and commentary based around what happened to her in the latest episode. And from a more literary perspective, a weblog based upon Sherlock Holmes writing each day about his cases (assembling itself into a chronology of the work of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) might be both interesting and academically valuable. Are there any weblogs like this out there? If not, why not?
By writing about the Minor Musings piece on the reasons for ‘weblogging’, I suppose I’m really rather missing the point, but nonetheless it’s worth talking about. I think it’s important that we have these conversations (at least with ourselves) every so often: ‘why am I doing this?’. If anything, the longer you maintain a site like this, the more you should be asking it of yourself, and (indeed) the more times you might be stumped for an answer.
In many ways, in the presentation of this site, the last thing that I’m thinking about is whether or not I should be finding new and exciting links for people out there in the ether. So in a sense I’m not a weblogger in the classic mode. But then, I’m not sure that many of us are. The links and commentary approach is, at its most simple form, rather uninteresting. My priorities are slightly different – first and foremost I think of this place as somewhere that I can write – and I use the hypertextual nature of the web to reinforce that writing. It’s like tracing an intellectual flow – following through the impulses that one has in some worked-out and public form, and in a place where they are not merely lost forever.
People read my site, and I have to confess that I like that, but I’ve run a lot of sites (fan sites, personal sites, creative sites) and a lot of people have come to those too. In the end I’ve deserted most of them. The thing that keeps me coming back to plasticbag.org every day is the opportunity to spark off a discussion, or to say something in a place where I know I’ll be heard. I suppose it is a space where my opinions feel valuable, interesting to people. And if weblogging gives other people the same feeling – well I can’t helping thinking that it is, therefore, a profoundly wonderful thing.
I’ve found this internet café on Melrose called @coffee, which is quite cool, although vastly more expensive than places like easyeverything in London. It’s given me a little time to relax with the net – write a little, think some stuff through – generally to get a little head rest. If you can imagine the brain as a muscle imagine mine as tight and contracted – it feels a bit like there isn’t space down any synapse for a pulse of thought to travel. Fucking around on the net seems to let my brain relax – to slump like mush and swill around the bottom of my skull. It’s more relaxing than it sounds. I need this sensation of emptying stress and excess thought from my mind… Nothing else quite does it for me…
