Once upon a time, most of us blogged quite a bit.
Lately, it's much less. Part of that is ill-suited platforms (LJ's glitchiness and lack of subscriber interest), part of that is the rush to do such small things: tweets, FaceBook updates, etc. Quick, easy...shallow...unfulfilling.
I miss so many of the bloggers that have stopped writing. Some continue on as brief, skeletal presences, occasionally doing a small bit and then disappearing again. Others blog only here and there, perhaps discouraged by so few others responding back to them. Some have quit entirely, or moved on elsewhere.
I even miss blogging, but most of the time I wonder why bother? Will anyone read it? Will anyone really care?
However, something only slightly-related brought this home to me the other day. I had not originally read The Hunger Games, partially because it was 'Young Adult' and partially because I'm not a big fan of fiction. When friends began to talk about it, I avoided it because I tend to cry whenever I worry about children/animals/people/anyone starving. That's my big trigger: the face of starvation in someone's life. [I can relay that it has always made me super-miserable to think of anyone being hungry, but it was really rammed home watching my mother starve to death while she died of esophageal cancer. It was the worst horror, and one I had no power over.]
When I was talked into going to see the movie, I went ahead and read through a blogger's synopsis of each chapter, trying to discern how awful the images of starvation might be. I finally determined I could likely hold up through it and went with them.
Movies are fun, quick, and instantaneously rewarding--there doesn't have to be a bit of thought or imagination on anyone's part to watch a movie. It's as interactive (or not) as you care to make it. It can also bore you to pieces if it is not well done.
But it is not WRITING. The Written Word has such power, and we are discounting that more and more as we rush through our lives.
The film industry allowed me to watch The Hunger Games and while recognising its power and the ability to transcend the different barriers of translating word-to-vision and overcoming visual-imparements (the books take place INSIDE KATNISS' HEAD; they're her thoughts and reflections of what she sees, but she does not actually SHOW US.) Very pretty.
However, magic of WRITING is such that I could not get past the first few chapters of READING The Hunger Games without becoming ravenously hungry. Having watched the scenes on film, I did not have any sort of feeling that I would have wanted to eat anything I saw in those sections where food lay obscenely all around the bedazzled children Tributes.
But READING the scenes in the book, and thinking along with Katniss about the slivers of pale purple melon or the luscious blue grapes; of imagining what it was like to FINALLY be able to GORGE oneself after a lifetime of never getting to eat enough...it was a powerful thing. To feel so stuffed with something so decadently--and yet simply--so wonderful as food and to feel the fear of yet again hungering...my God! That is something that neither a film nor a photo nor a tweet nor an update could have imparted to me!
Reading requires imagination to truly transmit its full strength, and it takes practice (i.e., reading often and repeatedly) to do that. Reading, not watching. Not passively 'seeing', but interacting with the words and sensing all things for oneself as one is transported to another realm.
I think we all do one another a disservice by not writing more and writing more frequently. We are not 'reading' one another as we could/should, and by that we are robbing ourselves of the delight of knowing one another on levels that only WORDS/THOUGHTS can open to us.
Please write today. Please read others. Think of the power we miss in not seeing the light of someone's soul in their words.
Nechtan :)
Lately, it's much less. Part of that is ill-suited platforms (LJ's glitchiness and lack of subscriber interest), part of that is the rush to do such small things: tweets, FaceBook updates, etc. Quick, easy...shallow...unfulfilling.
I miss so many of the bloggers that have stopped writing. Some continue on as brief, skeletal presences, occasionally doing a small bit and then disappearing again. Others blog only here and there, perhaps discouraged by so few others responding back to them. Some have quit entirely, or moved on elsewhere.
I even miss blogging, but most of the time I wonder why bother? Will anyone read it? Will anyone really care?
However, something only slightly-related brought this home to me the other day. I had not originally read The Hunger Games, partially because it was 'Young Adult' and partially because I'm not a big fan of fiction. When friends began to talk about it, I avoided it because I tend to cry whenever I worry about children/animals/people/anyone starving. That's my big trigger: the face of starvation in someone's life. [I can relay that it has always made me super-miserable to think of anyone being hungry, but it was really rammed home watching my mother starve to death while she died of esophageal cancer. It was the worst horror, and one I had no power over.]
When I was talked into going to see the movie, I went ahead and read through a blogger's synopsis of each chapter, trying to discern how awful the images of starvation might be. I finally determined I could likely hold up through it and went with them.
Movies are fun, quick, and instantaneously rewarding--there doesn't have to be a bit of thought or imagination on anyone's part to watch a movie. It's as interactive (or not) as you care to make it. It can also bore you to pieces if it is not well done.
But it is not WRITING. The Written Word has such power, and we are discounting that more and more as we rush through our lives.
The film industry allowed me to watch The Hunger Games and while recognising its power and the ability to transcend the different barriers of translating word-to-vision and overcoming visual-imparements (the books take place INSIDE KATNISS' HEAD; they're her thoughts and reflections of what she sees, but she does not actually SHOW US.) Very pretty.
However, magic of WRITING is such that I could not get past the first few chapters of READING The Hunger Games without becoming ravenously hungry. Having watched the scenes on film, I did not have any sort of feeling that I would have wanted to eat anything I saw in those sections where food lay obscenely all around the bedazzled children Tributes.
But READING the scenes in the book, and thinking along with Katniss about the slivers of pale purple melon or the luscious blue grapes; of imagining what it was like to FINALLY be able to GORGE oneself after a lifetime of never getting to eat enough...it was a powerful thing. To feel so stuffed with something so decadently--and yet simply--so wonderful as food and to feel the fear of yet again hungering...my God! That is something that neither a film nor a photo nor a tweet nor an update could have imparted to me!
Reading requires imagination to truly transmit its full strength, and it takes practice (i.e., reading often and repeatedly) to do that. Reading, not watching. Not passively 'seeing', but interacting with the words and sensing all things for oneself as one is transported to another realm.
I think we all do one another a disservice by not writing more and writing more frequently. We are not 'reading' one another as we could/should, and by that we are robbing ourselves of the delight of knowing one another on levels that only WORDS/THOUGHTS can open to us.
Please write today. Please read others. Think of the power we miss in not seeing the light of someone's soul in their words.
Nechtan :)
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