Make Me New, For The First Time.

Read this out loud:
I am reading this aloud: This blog wants to distance us. Wants to distance me from you. Author from reader.

 I am the author. You are the reader. I am the author. You are the reader. I am talking AT you. I am talking to YOU. 

Keep reading aloud: I feel heard. I feel consoled. I am talking to myself. (if someone walked by outside would they think I'm crazy?) You are listening to me aren't you? Yes, I am. Good.

STOP. (<-- if you read that out loud, stop now and go back and read it to yourself)

What did you feel when reading that paragraph out loud? By the end of that experience where would you draw the line between you and the blog? Between me and the blog? Did you feel like the blog heard you? Did you feel like you heard an author? Did you picture an old man sitting in the dark, face illuminated by the dim glow of his computer screen, typing the above paragraph into his blog? Or are these just self-manifesting words on a page?

Who did you think was writing the blog before you claimed you were the author? (don't believe me that you claimed you wrote this blog? Go back and read it over again.) 

This blog just came into being one morning. It didn't exist before you decided to read it. It was just electricity, floating in cyberspace. As you typed in the URL and began to read it you made it real. Sort of like a tree falling in the forest, if no one's around to hear it; it doesn't make a sound. Like a blog on the internet, if no one's around to read it, it doesn't exist. Does it? What do you think? Did this blog exist before you started reading it? It must have! You say. But where's your proof? Well, someone had to have written it! You say. But you also said you wrote it. Didn't you? But you didn't write anything. You read it. You read it out loud. And you read it out loud to yourself. You read it out loud to you and only you. You read it out loud to yourself and no one else! You did not read it to the computer screen. You did not read it to the blog. You read the blog. And then you spoke the blog.
But blogs are not spoken. That is not their medium. You turned the blog into content. You created something new.

The point illustrated here is that "The medium IS the message!" A blog is a written medium. Relying on the written word, and therefore the alphabet. You could say the content of this medium (the content of this blog) is thought. By translating the content of this blog (thought) into a new medium (speech) you are creating something entirely new and different.

I'm also trying to blur the line between you and blog. Reader and author. I'm trying to instill in you a sense of "inward distance" or "inward detachment." Few believe the internet can be a tool for meditation. Other than playing you meditative music, there are few guided meditations on the internet. But these guided meditations are still readings and would be just as effective printed on paper as they would on the internet. Now this is a tangent, but how cool would it be to have an online meditation program that utilized the vast resource that is the internet?

Youtube is kind of like that. Watching related video after related video. Stumble upon is as well. You get into a trance, a flow, of being perfectly in the moment and no where else. Your mind is not in your body, nor is it focused on the future or the past. All that matters, all that there is, is what is on the screen. That second of video, that one image. After you've consumed the content on that page you simply click next and flow to a new page for your consumption. Again, the medium is the message. It's not about what you're consuming anymore. But how you are consuming it. It's meditation. The content is a means to an ends. You're not consuming the content for the sake of the content anymore. You're consuming the content for the sake of using the internet. The ends is the internet. The ends is using the internet. You're using the internet right now. This is the end.