fledgling

Fledgling to leave the nest: update

The blog-formerly-known-as-fledgling is preparing to leave for its new quarters at WordPress.  The move will bring a new URL and a fresh design - and, more importantly, a new name.  The project remains the same:  the practice and critique of blogging in all its manifestations, with attention to the impact of media, new and old, on journalism and historiography.  After four months in its cosy nest here at TypePad, fledgling will try its wings from a new platform, with a new title:  Makurrah's Blog.

Look for it in the coming days at http://makurrah.wordpress.com/  You can continue to follow updates on Twitter @Makurrah.

Many thanks, TypePad, for your support.

 

 

Motivational reading: Clay Shirky's 'Here Comes Everybody'

I finally made the time to embark on Clay Shirky's book, which I've been wanting to read for months.  Having consistently come away from various blog posts and videos that he's shared a bit wiser than I was going in, I opened the volume with high expectations, which were met in the first few paragraphs.  His anecdotal example of the stolen phone, and his analysis of the extent to which it "demonstrates the ways in which the information we give off about ourselves, in photos and e-mails and MySpace pages and all the rest of it, has dramatically increased our social visibility and made it easier for us to find each other but also to be scrutinized in public," gets to at least one crux of our historical present.  What I like most in what I've read so far, however, is an unattibuted quotation that serves as a section header on page 6:  "Give me a place to stand and a lever long enough, and I will move the world."  For me, this stunning imperative provides a modicum of hope for the future, from the standpoint of a present that reads, all too often, as grim.  I recognize here the topos of the Archimedean point, but I can't recall the source of this "moving" (motivational?) citation.  Can anybody help me out? Clay, are you there? (You shouldn't be all that hard to find, right?)

A bird? A plane? Fledgling migrating to WordPress?

 

Things have been quiet over the past few days, as I contemplate the potential migration of fledgling from her TypePad nest to a new horizon with WordPress.  A significant decision, which I expect to make shortly with some input from folks who know someting about conversion.  I think she's strong enough to survive this migratory route, and to thrive at the other end.  Updates as the situation evolves. And of course I would welcome advice from anyone who has taken the leap.

Before the fact: Walter Benjamin on blogging

Today's brief offering transcribes another scrawled entry in my notebook, which records more of Walter Benjamin's One-Way Street (which had its own origins in barely-legible notes).  In the context of the year-and-decade-end inbox avalanche of advice on how to optimize, maximize and monetize one's blog, this comes, to me at least, as sweet relief and bracing reminder.

"Standard Clock"

To great writers, finished works weigh lighter than those fragments on which they work throughout their lives.  For only the more feeble and distracted take an inimitable pleasure in closure, feeling that their lives have thereby been given back to them.  For the genius each caesura, and the heavy blows of fate, fall like gentle sleep itself into his workshop labor.  Around it he draws a charmed circle of fragments.  "Genius is application." 

(Selected Writings, vol. 1, 446)

Guest post: "And so prorogation...and the new Holy Tunic."

Herewith fledgling's first guest post of the new year - make that first guest post, period.  The author is Phil Jackson, a noted authority on (among other things) health policy, British punk and post-punk music, Indian cooking and the legacies of Marxism.  To my mind the post exemplifies the kind of intelligent, incisive curation of writing and images for which this blog strives.

At least a minimal awareness of current affairs in Canada will be required to appreciate the critique embedded here.

 

And so prorogation… and the new Holy Tunic.

 

“ Driven by the contradictory demands of his situation, and being at the same time, like a juggler, under the necessity of keeping the public gaze on himself, as Napoleon’s successor, by springing constant surprises – that is to say, under the necessity of arranging a coup d’état in miniature every day – Bonaparte throws the whole bourgeois economy into confusion, violates everything that seemed inviolable to the Revolution of 1848,… while at the same time stripping the entire state machinery of its halo, profaning it and making it at once loathsome and ridiculous. The cult of the Holy Tunic of Trier he duplicates in Paris in the cult of the Napoleonic imperial mantle.”

The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Karl Marx 1852

 

 

 

  

 

@Biz on "A year in the life of Twitter"

A link in the Twitter blog post by @Biz (December 29, 2009) connects the reader to his article "Why we can never rest:  a year in the life of Twitter."

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry-sectors/technology/article6968440.ece

The article's closing lines are worth re-recording.

Many people have assumed that Twitter is just another social network, some kind of micro-blogging service, or both.  It can be these things but primarily Twitter serves as a real-time information network powered by people around the world discovering what's happening and sharing the news.  The Iranian election was the most discussed issue on Twitter in the final year of a decade defined by advancements in information access.

In the new year, Twitter will begin supporting a billion search queries a day.  We will be delivering several billion tweets per hour to users around the world.  These are figures we did not anticipate when we founded the company in 2007.

 

Walter Benjamin on the virtues of blogging

The new year appears to be off to a fine start. I'm fortunate enough to be blogging from a gorgeous small hotel in Toronto, where I'm ensconced en famille, ipod cranked as the kids watch a movie (Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs) as the snow falls softly on the other side of the windows and I embark on my first post of 2010. This time last year I wasn't yet a blogger; with nearly 100 posts under my belt, I'm feeling at least legit.  As I mentioned two or three posts back, my idea is to take as a point of departure for the next several posts the question of what Walter Benjamin has to teach us, in our time - for example, about blogging.  For the most part, I'll simply quote his writings, adding commentary where appropriate.

I begin by returning to a work that I cited recently:  One-Way Street, which is translated and collected in Selected Writings, ed. Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings (Harvard University Press, 1996, vol. 1, 444).  This is the first section of the text, entitled "Filling Station."  Its pertinence to blogging seems to me self-evident.

The construction of life is at present in the power far more of facts than of convictions, and of such facts as have scarcely ever become the basis of convictions.  Under these circumstances, true literary activity cannot aspire to take place within a literary framework; this is, rather, the habitual expression of its sterility.  Significant literary effectiveness can come into being only in a strict alternation between action and writing; it must nurture the inconspicuous forms that fit its influence in active communities better than does the pretentious, universal gesture of the book - in leaflets, brochures, articles, and placards [and blog posts, and tweets... - ed].   Only this prompt language shows itself actively equal to the moment.  Opinions are to the vast apparatus of social existence what oil is to machines:  one does not go up to a turbine and pour machine oil over it; one applies a little to hidden spindles and joints that one has to know.

More from Michelle Lang's "Afghanistan Dispatches"

A few days before her own death, journalist Michelle Lang blogged about the passing of Lt. Andrew Nuttall, a fellow blogger.  Both died via IED.

A "rough" year in Afghanistan

By Michelle Lang in Afghanistan Sun, Dec 27 2009

As 2009 draws to a close, Canada's top general conceded the past 12 months were "rough."

Speaking to reporters in Kandahar this weekend, Gen. Walter Natynczyk, the country's chief of defence staff, said the growing danger in Afghanistan and problems with corruption in the summer presidential election made the past year a difficult one. You can read more here.

His comments follow the death last Wednesday of Lieut. Andrew Nuttall, 30, who was killed when an improvised explosive device detonated as he was leading a foot patrol in the Panjwaii district. Nuttall was, by all accounts, a well-liked young officer who was bright and athletic.

At a ramp ceremony last week, attended by thousands of NATO soldiers and civilians who work at Kandahar airfield, Padre Steve Defer said Nuttall loved the outdoors and loved to surf off the shores of Vancouver Island, where he grew up. “The waves at Tofino," said Defer, "will never be the same."

 

RIP Michelle Lang, journalist and blogger

Canadian journalist Michelle Lang, who began reporting from Kandahar on December 20, was killed today, along with four Canadian soldiers she was accompanying on a routine patrol that ended when an IED exploded beneath their vehicle.  She wrote 7 blog posts during what was to be a two-week tour in Afghanistan.  Here is the most recent of her "Afghanistan Dispatches" for the Calgary Herald.

Wanted: combat barbers

 

By Michelle Lang in Afghanistan Tue, Dec 29 2009

 

On a recent trip outside of Kandahar Airfield, I started talking with a lady who had an unusual patch on her body armour. It was a skull with the words, "comat barber" underneath.

It reminded me of a story I had read several years ago about Canadian Forces' efforts to recruit hair stylists to work in Afghanistan.

My editor had asked me to write a story about civilians who come to work in Kandahar and I thought combat barbers would make for an interesting interview.

Yesterday, I spoke with Vanessa Mead, 25, from Fredericton, N.B., who came to Afghanistan one month ago to cut hair.

You can read about her adventures in Afghanistan here.

Read more "Afghanistan Dispatches" at http://bit.ly/4xSmrL

New Year's Eve with Anderson Cooper (not) and Walter Benjamin

As the year winds down, I have been thinking, in passing, about the nature of New Year's "resolutions," and specifically whether they are of the order of promises, which is to say, of contracts.  Does it matter whether resolutions are made public (which would imply consequences of some sort if they were not made good down the line), or can they remain vows, made and kept internally?  In any case I expect to see lots of resolutions on my Twitter feed in the next few days.

And herewith I make good on a tacit promise made in my last post, namely to reproduce Walter Benjamin's "The Writer's Technique in Thirteen Theses," which I leave to the reader to align with Stephen King's tips for writers, addressed earlier.  Benjamin's theses appear in One-Way Street, which is included in Volume 1 of his Selected Writings, ed. Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings (Harvard University Press, 1996, 458-459).  I thank my dear friend Tom Levin for flipping them to me nearly instantaneously following an email query just now.

I. Anyone intending to embark on a major work should be lenient with himself and, having completed a stint, deny himself nothing that will not prejudice the next.

II. Talk about what you have written, by all means, but do not read from it while the work is in progress. Every gratification procured in this way will slacken your tempo. If this regime is followed, the growing desire to communicate will become in the end a motor for completion.

III. In your working conditions avoid everyday mediocrity. Semi-relaxation, to a background of insipid sounds, is degrading. On the other hand, accompaniment by an etude or a cacophony of voices can become as significant for work as the perceptible silence of the night. If the latter sharpens the inner ear, the former acts as a touchstone for a diction ample enough to bury even the most wayward sounds.

IV. Avoid haphazard writing materials. A pedantic adherence to certain papers, pens, inks is beneficial. No luxury, but an abundance of these utensils is indispensable. 

V. Let no thought pass incognito, and keep your notebook as strictly as the authorities keep their register of aliens.

VI. Keep your pen aloof from inspiration, which it will then attract with magnetic power. The more circumspectly you delay writing down an idea, the more maturely developed it will be on surrendering itself. Speech conquers thought, but writing commands it.

VII. Never stop writing because you have run out of ideas. Literary honour requires that one break off only at an appointed moment (a mealtime, a meeting) or at the end of the work.

VIII. Fill the lacunae of inspiration by tidily copying out what is already written. Intuition will awaken in the process.

IX. Nulla dies sine linea -- but there may well be weeks.

X. Consider no work perfect over which you have not once sat from evening to broad daylight.

XI. Do not write the conclusion of a work in your familiar study. You would not find the necessary courage there.

XII. Stages of composition: idea -- style -- writing. The value of the fair copy is that in producing it you confine attention to calligraphy. The idea kills inspiration, style fetters the idea, writing pays off style.

XIII. The work is the death mask of its conception.

 

As a holiday bonus (since so many bloggers seem to be offering them), I will append Benjamin's theses on the critic's techniques, which also number thirteen.

The Critic's Technique in Thirteen Theses

I. The critic is the strategist in the literary battle.

II. He who cannot take sides should keep silent.

III. The critic has nothing in common with the interpreter of past cultural epochs.

IV. Criticism must talk the language of artists. For the terms of the cenacle are slogans. And only in slogans is the battle-cry heard.

V. "Objectivity" must always be sacrificed to partisanship, if the cause fought for merits this.

VI. Criticism is a moral question. If Goethe misjudged Holderlin and Kleist, Beethoven and Jean Paul, his morality and not his artistic discernment was at fault.

VII. For the critic his colleagues are the higher authority. Not the public. Still less posterity.

VIII. Posterity forgets or acclaims. Only the critic judges in face of the author.

IX. Polemics mean to destroy a book in a few of its sentences. The less it has been studies the better. Only he who can destroy can criticize.

X. Genuine polemics approach a book as lovingly as a cannibal spices a baby.

XI. Artistic enthusiasm is alien to the critic. In his hand the art©work is the shining sword in the battle of the minds.

XII. The art of the critic in a nutshell: to coin slogans without betraying ideas. The slogans of an inadequate criticism peddle ideas to fashion.

XIII. The public must always be proved wrong, yet always feel represented by the critic.

This seems to me a fitting offering at the threshold of a new year and decade.  One of my resolutions, made here for the first time, is to take Benjamin's work as the starting point for several posts to come.  Another is that I will not be watching Anderson Cooper on New Year's eve, which happens to be an important anniversary in my life.  The others will not be made public - at least not here. 

 
 

All the best in the New Year, Anderson.