Eccentric Flower:200911/Two Important Quotes
From Eccentric Flower
«November 2009 «Eccentric Flower
Two Important Quotes
- Jim Griffioen, brilliant writer and photographer-of-ruin, writing what would have been the death notice of mouth organ if I had been that good, and what is still in some ways the underlying conundrum of any website I'll ever make.
- Danny O'Brien, intermittently brilliant human whom I gather is a mite difficult to be friends with sometimes, irascible and neurotic and given to occasional meltdowns of self-loathing - put that mirror away before I smack you - who has, to my mind, never been more dead wrong than he is in these paragraphs. When he put NTK behind him, his voice lost something, and when he set up with the EFF, he became utterly uninteresting to me. Of course this is only personal taste. I'm sure there are people who cheered when he dropped the snark. But the snark was more real - he didn't have to be a mouthpiece for anything.
That said, I understand the last bit completely. There is something about the megaphone that has a chilling effect. (Especially if it's for a holier-than-thou group like the EFF.) Under the circumstances, sometimes the temptation to clam up completely and just go away for a while is irresistable. What happened when I was briefly a sex writer was that it stopped being "X said" and started, just barely around the edges, being "X, noted sex writer, said -" and that disturbed the shit out of me.
Really I just want to be able to say what I want to say without it having any consequences or significance for anyone or anything else in the world. But, on the other hand, I am also an exhibitionist; I want to be seen, I want to be read, I want to be loved. Which brings us to the question: Why would anyone come to see or read something that had no consequence or significance for them whatsoever?
"Why would anyone come to see or read something that had no consequence or significance for them whatsoever?"
To be entertained. And remember, most folks' standard of "entertaining" is abysmally low; how else do you explain Dancing with the Stars, Amazing Race, Big Brother and all of reality TV?
-- 23:41, 24 November 2009 (GMT)
I'm with you on Danny O'Brien. I hung on every NTK word, and though I keep seeing a few things that make me think I ought to support the EFF, every time I get ready to commit to a check they do something face-palm worthy. So I've tuned out everything EFF, which means I didn't even know where he was any more. Even though I exchanged email with him occasionally back in the day.
I also miss Mouthorgan, and wonder if you think you could keep up a nom de plume for such an endeavor, but understand if you can't.
-- 00:38, 25 November 2009 (GMT)
OT, but thank you for the link to Jim Griffioen - I've been reading it all morning long.
Detroit really doesn't have a thing to do with me, but I like his writing and his photos. Same with Boston, so maybe this is not so off topic after all.
-- 18:47, 25 November 2009 (GMT)
Bunny42:
If you write it well enough, I'll read it, even if it has no significance for me whatsoever. Your WoW posts are a case in point. I told Robert I'll be reading Tom Robbins oeuvre, because it's so beautiful to "listen" to his writing. I might not care so much about the subjects, but the "music" is breathtaking.
So, that's a reason. FWIW, I'm checking out the archives to see what I've missed. Ever since that conversation in the tea room (wish I could remember what it was called) I'm a believer.
-- 22:47, 24 November 2009 (GMT)