Anyway, I feel I should eventually write something about something that isn’t connected to Lois McMaster Bujold. Not yet, though. Maybe tomorrow’s Pirke Avot session will manage to avoid a connection.\n
I don’t think it’ll surprise anybody that I am ambivalent about the whole issue of audience<\/i> in blogging. I think the issue of audience is very important for me and my writing of any kind: who am I aiming for, how will that audience know it’s for them, how is that audience likely to interpret what I’m saying (and more importantly how I’m saying it), what response do I want from that audience, who am I likely to offend, how much do I care…\n
This usually works very well for me when I am writing instruction manuals and memos, although it does mean that I take a lot longer to do it than people expect me to. Ah, well. And when I’m writing a play (more accurately, when I wrote the play), I am both writing for actors, who I know pretty well, and for audiences, who perplex me. Even when I’m in them. But for that experience, I was fortunate to have my own personal dramaturge, and I let her stand in for my audience, and that worked for me.\n
When writing for this Tohu Bohu, however, I am (I said this before) ambivalent. Much of the time, I rely on my image of the Gentle Reader, who has been reading for some time (years, probably) and comments now and then, knows what I’m on about, is knowledgeable about the world and its wife, and is likely to give me the benefit of the doubt. Some combination of Chris Cobb (who is an old college buddy) and Matt Hulan (who I’ve not yet met). There are perhaps two dozen of y’all, and I am comfortable with you. I long ago decided that I didn’t want an a-list blog with hundreds of thousands of readers, not only because I am too lazy to do the work to get there, but because then something blog-related would occur to make me unhappy every damned day<\/i>. The way things are now, only rarely does anything cause me any blog-related stress, and when it does, it’s usually a miscommunication of some kind and is cleared up quickly.\n
However.\n
As a blog, it is open to the whole world. I try to keep in mind, as I write, that anybody could come and read, and that when I say anybody<\/i> I do mean anybody, including any specific person. Ricky DiPietro could read a note here. Dick Cheney could read a note here. Evan Schnittman could read a note here. Whatever I say about those people is possibly<\/i> being said directly to their faces. And that’s… intimidating.\n
Now, of course, most of the time, YHB can say whatever I want about somebody, and that person will not<\/i> read it, and neither will their children, their spouse, their ex-lover, their mother, etc. And when I do a hatchet job, I generally do so on somebody who is sufficiently public that I feel my own attack will be lost amongst the far harsher attacks being leveled in other locations. And I have to say that I didn’t really think that Neal Asher<\/a> had visited this Tohu Bohu, and I wasn’t at all sure that A. Lee Martinez<\/a> had visited this Tohu Bohu, but at this point it’s pretty much certain that Lois McMaster Bujold visited. I mean, seriously. At what point of fame does the need to egogoogle fade? I do it every week or two, myself, but then I’m not famous at all<\/i>, and this is only the third time that somebody I don’t know as a Gentle Reader has mentioned anything I’ve said. And, understand, I’m not mocking Ms. Bujold, or Mr. Asher, or Ms\/Mr Martinez (I assumed masculinity or at least maleness, way back then, but that was based on nuthin’). Do you know how, when you’re a kid, you think that there’s some point of gruppness that indicates completion, but as you age you start to realize that you don’t get a grupp card on some birthday that indicates completion? You never really know if you’re complete until it’s over? I suppose fame is somewhat like that—Ms. Bujold knows<\/i> that somebody is talking about her, somewhere, every moment of every day, the whole world around, but still… I was hoping the world wasn’t like that, somehow.\n Anyway.\n The point is not so much the famous people who I discuss here, fairly or unfairly, because even if it never occurred to me ever<\/i> that Ms. Bujold would ever read anything I’d put into this Tohu Bohu, I do try to keep in mind that it is possible, and that famous people are still people, and ethical concerns come into play. That was made clear to me at one point when I read a thread at the old Baseball Primer about Barry Bonds and had a sudden horrific vision of his son reading it.\n No, the point is that whilst I am writing for my Gentle Readers, and am (intermittently) able to keep in mind that any individual<\/i> read could wind up here, I am utterly unable to keep in mind that a mass of people could wind up here. I don’t write for a mass of people. I can’t really imagine what it would be like to be the guy who put up the video of his baby’s laughing fit and had millions and millions of visitors, day after day for years. The idea of a sudden invasion by barbarian hordes scares the shit out of me.\n And yet.\n There’s no question that the arrival of dance (prone to laughter) at just the right moment was a terrific thing for this Tohu Bohu and for me. And Cat Faber is certainly welcome (any friend of Jed’s is a proverbial, here). And when the Online Encore game brought me fauxlore, that was wonderful. And Matt Hulan himself, and Dan P, both of whom have become pillars of our little, um, what is it that pillars are of? Porticos? Anyway, in actual experience, the introduction of new Gentle Readers to this Tohu Bohu has been a Good Thing, and the expansion from my Old College Buddies to a slightly wider circle has brought with it a lot of great conversation, as well as a wider range of actual experiences, which have served to set me straight on a bunch of things. All good.\n And yet.\n If you are new here, then, please don’t feel unwanted, and please be a bit patient if I seem defensive or hostile. I am ambivalent about the whole issue of audience in blogging.\n Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus<\/I>, In Which Your Humble Blogger lays down in the road.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[201],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-navel-gazing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12047"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12047\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18747,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12047\/revisions\/18747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
-Vardibidian.\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"