Praise be our redundancy?
I’m a bit of a dinosaur. The fact that I am posting this video six months after it was shot proves this. My discomfort with social media means that for the last eight years I have avoided doing much online beyond reading email, blogging in spurts, wasting time on YouTube and scrolling through The Guardian. I have never understood how the internet aids what I do as a writer. It’s an obvious promotion tool, but, so far, it has had little impact on what I actually write. It has been noted that we writers of literary fiction and poetry act as though the internet did not exist, and I think it’s because the model/medium – pen and paper – is still the same, as is the aim – publication. I am aware that this is evidence of a chronic lack of imagination.
After yesterday’s post, I was wondering how I might be creative without having to produce anything. What I really mean is how I can be creative without falling into the inevitable trap of publishing / printing / distribution / old school reviews. My suggestion that the next phase of literature be as difficult for critics as possible finds an analogy in this video by Roger McNamee; I don’t claim to be as knowledgeable as he is, or to necessarily understand the implications of HTML5 (he doesn’t either). But as someone who essentially identifies as a writer – worse, a writer of poetry – and who has no practical skills beyond a basic understanding of html, I found his emphasis on content and creativity exciting. Much more interesting than the “social” emphasis you usually hear about and which makes me want to quit humanity all together. If you too are feeling a little strange or as if you’ve missed something over the last decade, take heart.
