I’ve now been blogging long enough on the outskirts of the lit-blog circle to know that the same links are passed from blog to blog, we’re all competing to blog first about identical material, and only .0001 percent of us are getting book deals.
I love the immediate gratification of posting – I still get a rush from publishing online instead of in my diary – but I often wonder why exactly I’m in this game. Is it all just an exercise in egoism? Am I after 21st century microfame? It’s funny how you have a blog for five minutes, and suddenly you think you’re a superstar like Tila Tequila. At first the exposure feels validating, and then you wonder what you’re exposing, and why. And then you remind yourself that these are irrelevant questions because only a handful of people read your blog.
But you encounter the same questions whenever you put something into the world. Who needs another rock song? Another short story? Another painting? For the most part, no one. Creative work can be appreciated, but there will never be enough people on Planet Earth to idolize the people who need to be idolized. So why do we produce this crap? Because we’re driven? Compulsive? Inspired? Desperate? Why did I decide to make a blog instead of filling up another wine-sotted composition book?
Because people need people, and art needs people, and blather needs people, and I need my handful of readers to know that I exist in the world, and not just on my couch, even if I’m just telling them what they already know from reading Gawker. But what kind of self-obsessed world is this that we feel we don’t exist without a public presence? It’s the kind of world that thrives on the micro-celebrity of its inhabitants. I have a dialogue in my dumb novel:
“I guess I wanted to be famous,” she said. “I found something I could do well and I wanted recognition for it.”
“Everyone wants to be famous, Jess.”
“Well, I wanted to be famous in my family.”
The world is getting smaller, and the extended families bigger, and we have an inner circle that comprises at least our Facebook and MySpace friends. We need to impress more people now than ever in order to be important. And this post started as a lament on how everyone always scoops my stories, but now it is something else. Now it is me being lonely, looking for answers in the blogosphere, where we have all learned the hard way they can’t be found.
PS Here’s a page of more Deep Thoughts.