4. This Blog.

Those few who visit this site may notice that most of it has gone! Once again I have gone on a massive edit spree and erased huge swathes - almost all the blog entries and even the useful "links page" and the popular "who I work with" post. All as part of my on going effort to spruce up this blog site. Some have expressed annoyance at my blanket erasure as an awful lot of pages have gone for good and even one person thought I had erased the blog entirely.

My motivation was to get rid of all the "fluff" and start to build a more structured narrative for this blog. Sadly I really didn't think it through and just erasing whole entries without thinking of what I was going to replace it all with was a little stupid. But here I am and I'm starting all over again. Fortunately the people behind this type of blog site have upgraded their system and have made it easier to archive various types of entry. My hope is that slowly a more disciplined blog will slowly unfold. Think of it as an "organic" development.

Let us look at the first principles behind my creating this web blog. Why did I start this blog? What is it that motivates me to make these entries? To be sure vanity plays no small part. Creating a blog like this is only a few rungs down to having your "novel" or "biography" published via the vanity press. Nothing is so reaffirming than seeing your words published and even though hardly anyone will notice it, there is a small thrill seeing your entries appear on the screen of your computer. But I don't think that is the main reason I find myself typing all this. I actually think it is cathartic; a cheap form of therapy and an effort to express ones thoughts, feelings and ideas. I like writting and maintaining correspondence and, as a student, I am familiar with writing essays, presentations and reports. I like to write. I like to express myself.

Everyone has ideas that are specific to their comprehension and experience. Thus human experience is original and precious in its individuality. A study of history often gives a superficial understanding since so many individual voices have been lost. Perhaps the ability for so many people today to express and exchange ideas on the Internet is its saving grace, I try and remind myself of that when faced with countless Spam emails, pop-ups and forums given over to racist, pornographic or small minded pursuits!

As I have already said; I like to write, to debate and to explore. I have always wanted to keep a diary and make frequent journal entries but the reality did not match the desire. Many a time I would start a journal, only to loose interest a few weeks later. Sometimes I would make some eloquent statement or pithy observation but then would devolve into an uninspired rant against the trivial and the tawdry. When I would return to my pages, I was not inspired but aghast that I could write such puerile self-conscious pap! The life of such diaries was short, what I imagined would be interesting archives of my thoughts and experience, end up as a mere couple of pages that I would eventually consign to the bin. Perhaps I expected too much? Perhaps my desire out weighed my capacity? What ever the reason, I found the electronic Blog a far easier device to use.

Originally I set up a family web site, the kind that came free with the internet server you subscribe with. It was fairly basic and was not at all satisfactory. I then found a free web site that offered a few bare bones and I posted a few pictures. Once again, I struggled to find a voice or even a direction. Sure the Internet is so wide that you can find all manner of interests and ideas but it is much harder to find a comfortable niche into which to set up a forum. It was only by accident that I found this Blog site.

The first site was set up just to mention and discuss the few movies, concerts or events I attended. After a few first attempts, I found things started to coalesce around the Edinburgh Festival. I may not have added to that site for some time, but it did wet my appetite for a more regularly updated blog – hence this one.

I confess that it is not a lean, well organized blog and it certainly holds an uncertain passage between diary and editorial, between the personal and the political, the comic and the serious. Perhaps time will bring clarity, but in the mean time I shall keep this as a “rompas” room of ideas and recollections. In fact, I can not guarantee that I shall not erase this whole site again in an act of caprice! In the meantime, please feel free to issue any comments on what is here.

That is all I want to say for now. I notice the date but shall not discuss why I should remember it. A sad date. But pay that no heed!