Category: The Arts

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The Blog Will Not Be Televised

Jo March writing
Jo March, depicted in Little Women, a film about…writing

Despite Gil-Scott Heron’s poem to the contrary, the revolution is being televised. News today is conveyed more through film than through words, though we usually need to see the headline in order to find the video during which people are reading from scripts. When there’s a big march, we see it depicted in video, from paid news programmers and live participants, waving their cameras around, showing pictures of clever protest signs with written slogans…

Nope. Nope. Much as I try to visualize it, the words just don’t go away. No matter how ubiquitous video has become, it will not entirely replace text. The art forms will continue to jostle each other for a share of your head space.

Will We All Turn Into Vloggers?

The question I’m pondering today was posed in the blogging community by Salted Caramel, who prompted bloggers about where they saw their blog going in 2020. Among other thought-provoking questions, what caught my eye was about the rise of vlogs:

In your opinion how relevant or popular are text based blogs (as opposed to vlogs) going to be in 2020 ? …YouTube videos made by veteran bloggers… claimed that all bloggers would need to get on the video bandwagon in 2020 if they were to survive. Their reason was that people no longer have time for text based content...

Question on Blogging Insights from the blog Salted Caramel
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On Reflection

Mirror art which says "Are You Really Here"
Mirror artwork by Jeppe Hein, photo at curator.com

One fun gift I received for Christmas was a book for making short daily bullet point lists, such as “Things to Do on my Next Day Off,” “People I Miss,” or “Advice for my Future Self.” Like a blog post prompt, it lets you do a little self-reflection and riff on the stream of consciousness that ensues. There’s space for three years’ worth of thoughts, so it will be fun to look back on what you were thinking–not to mention that you don’t have stick to three years. Yet, after a few days entering highlights and fun memories from 2019, I was taken aback by the suggested entry for December 30:

Some Things to Say in the Mirror Today:
a.
b.
c.

Ugh! To be honest, this is a detestable thought–looking in a mirror! That seems like a recipe for self-criticism of disastrous portions. I immediately resisted the thought with every fiber of my being. I have never liked looking in mirrors, considering it a necessary requirement of life, rather than an enjoyable pastime. Rather like laundering one’s undergarments, looking in a mirror is a needful chore, not one to get excited or thoughtful about. Does anyone like looking in mirrors?

Bronze Egyptian hand mirror
Mirror from the Egyptian Middle Kingdom, @1700 BC. Metmuseum.org.

Ancient Mirrors, Ancient Self-Absorption

Apparently, the Mespotomians did, or at least they had mirrors, made from polished obsidian and bronze dating roughly back to 4-6000 BC. Found in Turkey, Egypt, and even Central and South America from millennia ago, mirrors seem nearly as old an invention as the boat. Greek urns and Roman busts depict looking in mirrors, so that preparing one’s self to go out into the world seems nearly as ancient as writing or collecting taxes.

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Fa-la-la-la-la Is No Accident

Piano music The Christmas Song

Christmas is the one holiday that has its own music. In fact, music is so much at the core of Christmas celebrations that three of the top fifteen best-selling singles of all time are Christmas-themed, and public venues start playing carols right after Halloween, two months early. Think about it; no other American/western European holiday involves theme music.

I realized this fact last night while attending the second holiday concert of this season, listening to a stream of sublime medieval motets and “Marian polyphony” by Chanticleer. As they sang dozens of songs about mangers and Magi, I tried to think of songs for Halloween or Thanksgiving, and they are rare, ancillary, afterthoughts. In the religious elementary school I attended as a child, Easter and Christmas were considered equally worth of pageantry, and we performed songs for parents in both. But few people would now sing “Go to Dark Gethsemane” or “Christ the Lord is Risen Today” while shopping for chocolate bunnies in March.

Music is a fundamental part of the Christmas experience, as old as wassailing and gift-giving, almost as old as snow and the change of the seasons.

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