Community and our relationship with others in our immediate and global environments will be a key theme of this blog. I have posted this take on the world of social networking, to focus on how it can be both a positive resource and also, of course, a disconnected one....
WRITING ON THE WALL
there's not a lot left to say about the meaning of walls these days, is there? not after pink floyd
and all the poets and authors who've used walls as symbols of sanctuary or as isolation to avoid
having to deal with the complications of people and all their messy bloody human: stuff.
oh they say concerned, rejected, maybe fussing: i can't get through. when you've had enough:
so then I just think but how the hell can i describe the strange architecture I design
how to feel less blocked, more whole, make a place that's a meeting point, and truly mine?
it's not real its virtual, superficial: do walls have faces? yes, a polite and neat facade -
come write on my wall paste and copy hearts and hollow hugs and some meaingless charade.
look at my profile, this is me, I always look good from the right angle, if the light falls well
but today i don't have likes and comments dont want pokes feel fake like an empty shell.
now you will think me harsh, my space not fun, or fb and twitter friendly: social screwball
are you alienated by the blankness of my page today, pictures of barbed wire on my wall?
and though you never really talk to me, I'm in your collection: we went to the same school
and yesterday, last week, sometime on news feed i was not like this but friendly, cool
maybe you might not want to leave the cheerful goofy comments or update me with a tweet.
some people will facebook friend you but then ignore you passing by in the street.
I wonder why I feel so pointless, really bored and irritated, don't want to paste and copy,
feel like writing weird graffiti on my wall and making bad response to anything that's soppy.
if twelve people made me smile this week then i'm really bloody lucky and honestly I'm glad -
but I don't want to get these pasted chain messages they make me feel lonely and more sad.
if I want to tell you something special I'll find images, words more personal to share
I don't want to use the same standardised, latest, mass-produced slogan posted everywhere:
then i think, i'm just a bastard, a social aberration if i don't send it forward, it's unkind.
I do enjoy the networking, and the upbeat stuff, but sometimes a wall's to hide behind.
god damn it today I'm grim and surly and i don't get the point that fb's not for "ugly raw."
I wish that we could connect more: see, feel each other as people, I want to make a door.
but even then, sometimes I would have to close and lock it. use a sign "not to be disturbed"
god damn it, as you read this, either you get it or by now you're switched off and feel perturbed?
the tough reality though is that I'm ill and stuck at home, and if you are too you'll understand:
more and differently than anyone healthy, active, the isolation in fukkin nowhere land
and how the anchor and the lifeline of the computer and the link with others
often is a vital point of contact, your community, yet how at other times it smothers,
making us feel trapped, frustrated, urgently yearning to be in the world and real
and wanting to be more than words and pictures on a screen: to think, exchange, feel..
and when you're sick and sore and in four walls and behind the walls of internet
you might be wanting living presence, touch, the many strokes and signals we don't get
and so our moods and our reactions get distorted, unhinged and confused
we send out invitations to friends to people we don't know or previously refused.
we forget to answer messages, or we write them in a panic, frantic without reflection
we wonder why someone does not respond on chat, we inflict or suffer on-line rejection
or if we get really messed, missing normal life, we have posting frenzies or suddenly disappear.
did you ever sit at home, fekked up, and staring at your screen in weird shut down and fear?
we do odd things like removing half our contacts list, in a way that seems quite cold and clinical,
or write intense outpourings telling general acquaintances that we love them: do I sound cynical?
I'm not you know, I feel, care, breathe, laugh, hurt, enjoy, as we all do and yet feel remote, strange
but my god however alienated it can seem at times, I would go mad without this this laptop inter- exchange
(eva day)
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