I think blogging more regularly is finally starting to become a habit. I often come across blogs of artists and personalities I am interested in – only to find out that their blog entries are often one a month or even less. I wonder why that is? Why start a blog if you are disinclined to write?
I can posit a reason or two: sometimes, life just takes over. It is so fast, furious, or even simply nice, that writing about it seems to be a moot point. Why write when life is so full you don't feel the need to fictionalize it in any way? Or when everything is a nice routine? Writing when you are content seems to be less of an urgent activity than when you are striving, unhappy, nostalgic and desire to express yourself. If an artist's life is normal, happy and full of normal, happy regular things – what is there to write about? Maybe there is, but there is less of an urge to try and do so.
Sometimes, however, it's the opposite. An artist won't write because he/she feels too fragile to write, because everything has gone wrong. Some of us are less inclined to share our faults and failures with the world at large. "No news is good news" sort of thing. What this means is: we hide when we are weak and feel lost. Reaching out to the world and letting it know we are in trouble seems like a cop-out and a signal that we are, indeed, failing and unworthy. An artist who has been public for a while is also surrounded by people – management, label and others. If there is a sense of frustration and it has been vented online, it will surely find its way to be seen by those who are connected to the artist's career, which is probably not a good thing.
And finally, it may be a question of discipline. Starting something is easy – like buying a plant. Sticking with it, feeding it, making sure it gets water regularly, trimming it, puting it in a bigger pot – well, that's a whole other thing. Good thing: blogs are like succulents – they don't die. Blog or not blog, your page is still there.
I used to be terrible with plants, in fact – before my whole 'flower alchemist' phase. I am quite a bit better now. When I look at my plants now I can almost tell when they are happy or not: it is almost as if it is talking to me. That doesn't give me any ideas as to WHY that is, of course, but most of the time it is pretty easy: it wants attention. With attention comes water and care. A little bit of regular attention to anything, and it will grow and flower, including a blog: regular being the key word here.
This morning I found a great quote from Tchaikovsky:
“There is no doubt that even the greatest musical geniuses have sometimes worked without inspiration. This guest (inspiration) does not always respond to the first invitation. We must always work, and a self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext that he is not in the mood. If we wait for the mood, without endeavouring to meet it half-way, we easily become indolent and apathetic. We must be patient, and believe that inspiration will come to those who can master their disinclination.”
― Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
It is so true, in my opinion. In Russian we say: "Аппетит приходит во время еды". This means: Appetite arrives while you are having the meal.
I do use Twitter, of course, but there is something so annoying about having to use 140 characters. I prefer it for news and communication, as well as keeping up with people I admire, who are online – like Esa-Pekka Salonen, who is my favorite conductor, and many others.
And so I am happy to say that I am getting back into blogging regularly – not to blog but to write, because I am developing a taste for it again. Writing should be done for writing's sake, otherwise it is contrived, stunted and reads more like a press release, than an account of human experience. Same goes for poetry: I have been so focused on music recently, I only now realized how much I have neglected my poetry. Not that both don't go hand in hand, because I do write lyrics, and that can be constituted as a form of poetry. However, what makes writing poetry different is that there is no music involved, and words and the spaces in-between are both the brush, palette and the canvas.
