Wednesday, December 03, 2003
Rock Star
A few weeks ago I wrote about how Richard Hell had said "Celebrity is the new art form." Little did I realize that I might soon be referring to myself. Having a blog means that one becomes a public figure, and being a public figure is similar to being a celebrity in the right circumstances. For example, I mention Richard Hell, who to many of you, is simply a name that I have mentioned a few times before, but to a certain type of music devotees, Richard Hell is a celebrity. Under similar circumstances, I am a celebrity. If someone types 'ordinary language' into Google, I'm right there, in second place. If someone to whom I have referred, but I do not know, does a vanity search for their own name, and runs across my blog, then suddenly, there's a strange mixture here.
The strangeness of the mixture works in at least two directions. First of all, the person to whom I have referred will probably have been a public figure, and therefore, objectified. They present themselves as something with the expectation that they are performing, or acting, but it is not necessarily them in their entirety. ThenI write about them, and in writing about them, but not to them, or for them, the objectification continues. I roll it through my head, and put it out in a form that other people may want to read. Therefore, I am performing as a public figure as well. Anyway, this person may run across my description of their performance on my blog, and thus, they read things about them that they were not intended to read.
The second weirdness is in the intent. Communication works with intent. It's entirely based on context. When I watch a performance, I do not recieve all of the context, as it's one-way. Then I take what I did not fully understand and distill it. Then the performer-person comes across my blog, and sees themselves removed of context, through my context. It's not really complete communication. It's not even close. So it's disorienting.
Understand that this situation is only half hypothetical. I'm not trying to explain something to my dear devoted readers here (both of you) as much as I am trying to put my thoughts into words.
I think what gets me is the idea of judgement. It is against my nature to make complete judgements with other people. When I review a performance, however, I do it in the form of a judgement. But when that judgement appears to the performer, it takes a form I did not necessarily intend. And if there's one thing I intensely dislike, it's when someone thinks I think things that I don't intend. Which almost certainly will happen in situations like these, and situations like these will arise as long as I am at least a semi-public figure.
A few weeks ago I wrote about how Richard Hell had said "Celebrity is the new art form." Little did I realize that I might soon be referring to myself. Having a blog means that one becomes a public figure, and being a public figure is similar to being a celebrity in the right circumstances. For example, I mention Richard Hell, who to many of you, is simply a name that I have mentioned a few times before, but to a certain type of music devotees, Richard Hell is a celebrity. Under similar circumstances, I am a celebrity. If someone types 'ordinary language' into Google, I'm right there, in second place. If someone to whom I have referred, but I do not know, does a vanity search for their own name, and runs across my blog, then suddenly, there's a strange mixture here.
The strangeness of the mixture works in at least two directions. First of all, the person to whom I have referred will probably have been a public figure, and therefore, objectified. They present themselves as something with the expectation that they are performing, or acting, but it is not necessarily them in their entirety. ThenI write about them, and in writing about them, but not to them, or for them, the objectification continues. I roll it through my head, and put it out in a form that other people may want to read. Therefore, I am performing as a public figure as well. Anyway, this person may run across my description of their performance on my blog, and thus, they read things about them that they were not intended to read.
The second weirdness is in the intent. Communication works with intent. It's entirely based on context. When I watch a performance, I do not recieve all of the context, as it's one-way. Then I take what I did not fully understand and distill it. Then the performer-person comes across my blog, and sees themselves removed of context, through my context. It's not really complete communication. It's not even close. So it's disorienting.
Understand that this situation is only half hypothetical. I'm not trying to explain something to my dear devoted readers here (both of you) as much as I am trying to put my thoughts into words.
I think what gets me is the idea of judgement. It is against my nature to make complete judgements with other people. When I review a performance, however, I do it in the form of a judgement. But when that judgement appears to the performer, it takes a form I did not necessarily intend. And if there's one thing I intensely dislike, it's when someone thinks I think things that I don't intend. Which almost certainly will happen in situations like these, and situations like these will arise as long as I am at least a semi-public figure.