This song, technically, has nothing to do with Barcelona. Still, every time I hear it, I get wildly excited about my upcoming trip to Spain. What it does have in common with my trip to Spain is hope; it’s almost overflowing with optimism. I don’t really have much of anything planned for my trip to Spain yet, and I am leaving in less than a month. I’ve been warned about getting robbed or worse in various parts of Spain that I’m planning to visit. And yet, I just hear the word Spain and I nearly jump up and dance to this song, this song that’s been merrily playing in my head. And I’m somehow unreasonably convinced that I’ll simply figure it all out as it comes.
Instead of thinking about other important matters, I have been thinking a lot about the whole blogworld lately. I suppose I think about it a lot because I’m not altogether comfortable with it. At first, I just wanted a space to write, and every time anyone left a comment, my heart leapt, simply because it meant something I’d written actually connected, actually conveyed what I was trying to say. And really, that’s all I expected from the blogosphere, a little give-and-take, a little unencumbered space to let thoughts flow.
But that’s not all I got. I’ve met many a blogger in real life now. This weekend, three of them came over for brunch (all bearing gifts, kind souls that they are), but the distinction that they are bloggers didn’t occur to me until much later. Much later, I was thinking of how different the three are, in terms of their background, their personality, what interests them. And I’m just as different. Yet, there we all were, sitting in a crack shack, brought together by none other than this blogworld thing I claim to keep always at arms’ length.
Dropping Tamasha back to her hotel, we were talking about how this whole problem is really only one of our generation- although I hesitate to call it our generation, since I’m about a billion years older than her. But still, really, it’s only a problem for those of us who didn’t grow up using friendster, myspace, facebook, all these social networking gigs. It’s strange to think, but undeniable nonetheless, that it’s probably going to become thoroughly commonplace to know all these weird details of someone’s life and thoughts before ever meeting them in person.
Stranger still, all of this supposed intimacy, this notion that people know you reveals some weird perspective on the whole idea of getting to know people. Fundamentally, we all prepare a face to meet the faces that we meet. Maybe other people are more adept at presenting themselves honestly, or maybe other people are less fragmented. But blogging has really started to lead me to the conclusion that no one really knows me. Some of the people who know me best have never read a word of this blog, and haven’t seen me in years. Some of the people I see every day don’t know me at all. And some of the people who read this blog every day don’t really know me either. I’m just presenting different sides, but are they really sides, or just sleight of hand? Am I presenting different facets of the truth, or am I just changing masks? Maybe it’s not just the blogworld I keep at arms’ length.
No comments:
Post a Comment