Conorthoughts

Interpretation as self-understanding that does not know its name

I got a comment here some weeks ago from the_tower, a student of Chinese, Psychology and Japanese at the University of California at Berkeley. It was in response to a previous post of mine on something that he had written. His comment marked an advance for me. So far, bar Bea who is family (my niece), I have not attracted readers to, or comments on, my blog! Admittedly, I had asked the_tower to comment, but even so ...

I paste the_tower's comment (I have added a few links to it). He wrote:
    

Hi, sorry for getting back so late.
I don't know what TrackBack is, so I doubt I got anything from you. I did read this post in response to your comment on my LJ [Live Journal].
To be honest I'm a little surprised you found that post, as most things I say on my blog go unnoticed by all save my friends (and flist).
The post in question was originally composed in a fit of annoyance at the number of spats that occur in the various fandoms between opinionated fans, not only because of how stubbornly they cling to their own beliefs and refuse to give any leeway to the opinions of others, but also because many of these spats could have been avoided if the writers had attempted to communicate their thoughts more clearly. A lot of these fandom wars are reported and mocked at a Journal Fen community called Fandom Wank . Thoughts about the immense popularity of Fandom Wank and of the frequency with which certain online communities get reported there led to thoughts about the pitfalls of communication online in general, which led to the post. Another thing that prompted the post was my personal experience with instant messaging through programs like AIM, where, if I don't know someone personally, it's slightly harder to establish some sort of connection, or rapport, with the person.

In my initial post which the_tower has read, I had written:

What most interests me in the_tower’s thoughts is the sense he gives of how the other person, or other people, are almost present. Online communication, blogging in particular, has the form of a conversation between two or more people, even if it is not, literally, a conversation. It is virtually (in the sense of 'almost' ) one. There is a desire for an immediate response, for the other’s, or others’, presence. Are you there?

the_tower didn't comment on this in his response but re-reading these sentences of mine now, it seems to me that they had little to do with what he had written, that I was simply interpreting his post to say what I happened to want to say, as interpreters often do.

I am less confident than I was a few weeks ago of the truth of what I said i.e. that online communication, blogging in particular, has the form of a conversation between two or more people, even if it is not, literally, a conversation. But I think it is fair to say that my posts on Bea (beginning with 'Advice from Beatrix Joyce (my niece)' have the form of a conversation. I doubt now whether there is, as I wrote

a desire [in blogging generally] for an immediate response, for the other’s, or others’, presence

But this is, I think, a good interpretation of my posts on Bea.

Interpretation is often self-understanding that does not know its name. I was not writing about the_tower's post at all but about myself.   

Has it ever struck you, as it often does me, how, when someone complains about someone else, the complaint is more true of the person complaining than it is of the person who is being complained about?   

I have just posted a comment on the_tower's blog: 
 
Dear the_tower (Do you, by the way, have a more common-or-garden name that you would be prepared to reveal to me?),
thanks for posting a comment on my blog, and sorry to have been so very slow to acknowledge it. I hope that you get that essay done today.
By way of response to your comment, I've posted something on my blog again. I don't know if you'll make head or tail of it. I risk disappearing up my own bottom. But I feel that, sometimes, you have to take risks where you hope that, later on, you will understand why you took them.
I've been making some gentle progress on my blog, though I still don't know how TrackBack works exactly! I've been posting mainly on my niece Bea, and trying to get her to start a blog. The purpose is to try to get my writing going again after finishing a doctorate. I went into a kind of writer's depression after it. What I'm noticing in my posts on Bea is that there is some gentle humour in them, and that is a good sign for my writing endeavours, however tentative they are for now. I am entertaining myself, which is a start.
I am going to post this message as part of the post that I have just finished (bar pasting this into it). I hope that is O.K..         
Best wishes and thanks again,
Conor
www.conorthoughts.net

Bea, blogging pandas and Dante Alighieri

Bea was been in touch again. I am still hoping that she will set up a blog and lead me into the light. Dante had his Bea, and so do I, in my own way. Dante never got any missives from his Beatrice. I'm lucky! Perhaps I should start a new category 'Beatrix'. Done! (See the categories on my right navigation bar!). So Bea wrote:

Hi Conor,
last time my email on hotmail didn't work. I don't know why. I suppose "Bill Gates and his gang" are at work again ... ha ha!
Yes, I know that I haven't got anything done AT ALL yet on my site, and I repeat, YET.
I'm going to work on it now ...
Bye,
Bea

["Bill Gates and his gang" is a reference to a comment about Microsoft that I made towards the bottom of a post 'Bea to the rescue'.]

I replied:

Bea,

maybe it didn't work because, at Hotmail, if you don't use your email for a month, it gets semi-closed down, but does leave you the option of waking it up again (It used to be if you didn't use it for three months). Might that have been what happened?

I looked on your site again. I think that it probably doesn't have blogging software built in. If it did, I think that it would advertise this fact.

Can I make a suggestion about where to go to build a state-of-the-art open source - meaning free! - blogging site for the panda bears? [Bea is setting up a site with her cousin to save the endangered pandas.] I would suggest Word Press. Ultra cool cats - cool at least in my world - use it. I don't know about cool pandas.
I should switch to it myself and intend to but, for the moment, I'm paying about $7 a month (I think it is) at Typepad . The functionality at Word Press would be pretty much the same - in fact probably better - but building  a blog there would involve a bit more work and application of brain power. But for a brain box  like you, that wouldn't be a problem, and open source, as I mentioned, is the way to go (Bill and his gang probably hate it. They may have nightmares about it.).
I'm waiting to get a bit more wind behind the sails of my blog before switching it into Word Press. For my $7 I get free support which has been helpful. In its place, Word Press would offer, I imagine, very active community help-one-another fora, where cool pandas just might hang out.

Love,

C

Bea replied:

Hi Conor,
yes, I think you're right about my site. It hasn't got that blogging thing that I have on my MSN site (my MSN 'space', as they call it).
Thanks for giving me the site for cool pandas, or whatever.
I'm going to check it out.
Bea

Bea to the rescue Part III

Bea has finally ridden to the rescue in response to my most recent call for help and has posted a comment further down that I paste here. 

Hi Conor!

I have finally got myself to look at your blog. Suprisingly, it's quite good. Only, that bit about your day or something was very long and boring. Try to make it a bit shorter, so that people don't look every minute to see how much more there still is to read! Anyway, if you couldn't get hold of my blog, then you must be right about "Bill Gates and his gang". Ha ha!
I think I have another website somewhere but the site is on the other computer, and I can't remember what it was called! Still, a shame that you can't read my MSN blog.
No, I don't mind you using that photo! I think it was a great idea, making me famous ... ha ha!
I'll try to make a new blog on a not "Bill Gates and his gang" site ... ha ha!
Well, bye for now,

Bea

["Bill Gates and his gang" is a reference to a comment about Microsoft that I made towards the bottom of a previous 'Bea to the rescue' post.]

A drop from heaven

Re: Vice-President, Media Relations role

Dear Conor

Thank you for your interest in Lehman Brothers and for sending us your
CV. Unfortunately, we received a number of applications from candidates
with more relevant experience. However with your consent we would like
to keep your details on our database for any suitable positions that
come available in the future.

Please note that all active vacancies at Lehman Brothers can be viewed
on the Lehman Brothers careers site at www.lehman.com/careers/europe.

Thank you for your interest in Lehman Brothers.

Regards

Ruth Fripp

Flip! When it rains, it pours.

Bea to the rescue - Part II

No word from Bea yet in response to my last post. She must be busy. I have got some encouraging words, however, from my therapist:

Dear Conor

thanks. I got your cheque today. Whilst glancing at your blog it struck me again how well you write. So please, keep this going!

Blogging probably has a greater potential to build confidence than does the old Ivory Tower. But might it encourage plagiarism as well? How often does one get feedback, I wonder.

Regards

Michael

 

Plagiarism is the least of my worries. Readers are what I lack, and I will have to go and find them. Plagiarism can be a risk for bloggers but it should not be overstated. In any case, I am confident that I have not posted anything so far worth plagiarising. 

I am not paying Micheal to praise me but in as much as 1) building my self-belief is an aspect of what he is trying to do, 2) encouraging a writer who is not writing very much to write can help his self-belief and 3) praise is being used here to encourage, I will not argue that Michael's praise is that objective. But here it is: I am in need of praise just now, with winter descending.

I will write to Michael to answer his question about feedback, the answer being that it depends on the blog.  Jonathan Schwartz is near one end of the feedback scale and I'm at, rather than near, the other end.

Bea to the rescue

I've been trying to get Bea (my clever niece) who lives in Malden, near Nijmegen in the south east of Holland, to start a blog and help me get my blog going. For lack of blogging company, I still haven't figured out how Trackback works or, indeed, what it is exactly.

I emailed.

Bea,
hello. Hope you got those photos.  Please have a  look at my blog (at http://www.conorthoughts.net). I am not doing too well for the moment in getting it going. I need blogging companions. It would be good if you started a blog. There must be lots of places where you can start them for free.
Love,
Conor

Bea, however, is very busy. It is difficult to get hold of her. I eventually get get her on the 'phone. She tells me that she has a kind of blog on her website and suggests that I look at it. She emails the link.

Hey Conor,
this is what it says in my address bar when I go to my website:

http://spaces.msn.com/members/darkvlightbea/PersonalSpace.aspx?_c01_blogpart=myspace&_c02_owner=1&_c=blogpart"

I know it's very long but ... I don't think it works. Try anyway, or else try:

http://spaces.msn.com/members/darkvlightbea

That might work.
I havn't had time to look at your blog yet, and I have to do homework now. I'll try to look at it soon.
Bye,
Bea

Neither link works. Bill Gates and his Microsoft gang are, I assume, responsible. It is less than half a blog that they are offering MSN users, a pseudo-blog.

Bea, as I imagine you are aware, MSN is keen to keep you within MSN once you are in there, the better to sell you products, either directly or by making you dependent on its software by getting attached to more of the features that it has to offer the better to then sell you services and products. One of the many ways it does this is, I assume, to only let you blog - pseudo-blog - with other MSN bloggers. So it keeps you within its walls. 

There is no technical reason for MSN to do this i.e. no good reason why I can't just paste your MSN URL and look at your MSN blog. The reason is ultimately commercial. Bea, before Bill Gates and his Microsoft gang get you, I think that you should consider going open source, beginning, perhaps, by switching to the Firefox browser, using it instead of Bill's Internet Explorer, a switch that I have made recently and not regretted. Firefox is 'brill' as Martha [Bea's late aunt, my late sister] would have said.

I have emailed again.

Bea,
I have just posted something on my blog that might - or might not - interest you. To make it less boring, I have included a photo, of you. I hope that's O.K! I have also reproduced in it - published -  a recent email from you. I hope that that is also O.K.
Love,
C

Bea wearing my glasses in Dublin airport this summer while we were killing time with Paul (Bea's father, my brother) between flights

Out of bed to the London Social Forum

To broaden my social life, still too narrow after five months back in London, and to find a campaign or two to get involved in, I got up early on Saturday morning and went to a conference and day of workshops organised by the London Social Forum at City Hall (Ken Livingstone's office).

I made my flask of coffee and  sandwich (ham, good ham, avocado, slightly old and tomato) in a bit of a rush but then took my time cycling along the south bank of the river, assuming that the introductory session would not start bang on 9.30.

It was a lovely if undecided morning and, being Saturday, there was next to no traffic. That king of the road feeling is nice on a bicycle. The subject is king. I hadn't been to Ken's den before (not that I am on first name or any other terms with him), in fact, until the evening before, I hadn't known that there was a brand new City Hall, so was partly also moved out of bed by a desire to visit it. I had wondered a couple of weeks ago as I cycled over Southwark Bridge what that unusual looking building was down by Tower Bridge.

It is a fine building, I think, a spiral on the inside, in a wonderful location right by the river. London Bridge looms to the right and the Tower of London is spread out directly opposite on the other bank. What a building the Tower is, with its cold linear frenzy. This must be the best view of the Tower there is.

It turned out to be a very good day, though not weather-wise. I've been getting too isolated in my flat so was in need of 'peopling'. There were lots of interesting people around - God, I do like the company of activists - they were friendly, and I found a campaign to join five minutes into the first workshop I opted for, and the sense of achievement from this percolated nicely through the rest of my day. I had chosen the workshop because two people from an international financial tax campaign Attac were supposed to lead it. But they weren't there. They hadn't got of bed, I suspect. John Christensen, however, from tax justice network was there. Really good stuff, I think, and John is an impressive and nice man. I'm getting involved.

I was in a voluble mood all day, with perhaps some of my buried, unemployed, anger seeping out. Teresa Hoskyns, who chaired the plenary at the end of the day, accused me in that meeting of being "awkward". I suppose I was being awkward.

I ended up in the pub for the evening with about fifteen participants, Teresa included. Teresa bought me a drink. I bought her a drink. Peace. Among other interesting people I had met during the day who also came to the pub were Nico Andreas Heller, a former  conceptual artist now working in, from what I could understand, community enabling software, Magdalena, a painter originally from Munich but of a Polish family with one of those long impossible-for-us-to-pronounce Polish family names and her cousin Helena from Attac. Helena was to have been at the early tax workshop that I had gone to. She started to try to convert me from tax justice network to Attac but John Christensen had done a good job on me.

I hope to see them again, inside but also outside the Social Forum.