Ani, Bowie & life

I might have made the wrong decision…

Ani di Franco didn’t trans­port me last night. She was com­pet­ent and funny, and some of her poems were unbe­liev­ably good. I loved hear­ing a few of my favour­ite songs and she made me think a lot about rela­tion­ships and polit­ics. I was still me though, a little detached, listen­ing to a gig, and miss­ing Jonathan and think­ing, think­ing, think­ing. She didn’t take me out of myself the way music can some­times. Partly, I think it’s that I was fur­ther back, although I ended up in a better seat than I paid for thanks to the nice people in front of fizit and freek­boi not show­ing up.

Damn this money stuff that means I could­n’t afford to go to both this and David Bowie, because then I would­n’t resent it and think “I made the wrong decision”. I chose not to go to Bowie because I saw in in 86 and he played only modern stuff (what today’s Age is call­ing his cre­at­ive dead­zone) and I was dis­ap­poin­ted. I haven’t listened to a single album he’s made since that year, although I still reg­u­larly listen to the albums he made from ’69 to ’79. I thought he would play new stuff only. When the tick­ets first went on sale, there was a clash between him and Ani. Now I hear he’s play­ing exactly what I want him to and there’s a second gig tonight and I can’t afford to go. I am espe­cially resent­ful when I read reviews like this one from paracelsus who I am increas­ingly jeal­ous of (smart, gor­geous and lyr­ical, no fair).

Of course, I have to stop at this point and note that that’s pretty petty on the large scale of wants in the world and that I sent out invoices a few days ago and I can afford rent and food and I’m going to Les Hur­le­ments d’Leo on Tuesday…

Let’s see: I’m also out­raged-but-unsur­prised at Bush and Schwar­zeneg­ger’s response to the gay mar­riage issue, a little dis­ap­poin­ted by Kerry’s response but con­flic­ted because I *still* don’t believe in regis­ter­ing mar­riages with a cent­ral­ised State anyhow (although I do believe in cel­eb­rat­ing unions pub­licly – after all, hawk_eye and I were handfasted…).

And finally, I’m think­ing about the way in which this journal and my use of it has changed and how it’s chan­ging my thesis…

I wrote some of this in response to a recent locked post by abiuro. I’ve used the Net as a way to combat loneli­ness for years. When I was first on it in 1992, it was just a lark. Mainly news­groups and chat. I was access­ing it from uni. In 1993, when we had it at home, it was still that. In 2000, when I moved here, it became some­thing to fill in the hours while I was miss­ing hawk_eye because phone calls were expens­ive and he had his own life sur­roun­ded by our friends still in Sydney.

I stopped using it so much when I was spend­ing a lot of my spare hours social­ising with dai­syn­erd or Jonathan, but now I have a lot of spare hours again, or at least I’m pro­cras­tin­at­ing, so I’m find­ing I’m online a lot again. But now it’s not chat and news­groups, it’s LJ.

When I star­ted it, I inten­ded to present an intel­lec­tual, poetic self, an ideal­ised self. I wanted admir­a­tion and debate. I wanted to be paracelsus, hon­estly.

As time went on and more of my ‘real-life’ friends were here, I cre­ated groups, reflect­ing the social rela­tion­ships and trust I had. Some­times, someone would respond in a par­tic­u­larly sens­it­ive or insens­it­ive way and they would be –ugh, don’t like the term, but– pro­moted or demoted to more or less trus­ted groups. Some of those people are people I mostly only know through LJ, but they’re now in the almost-most-trus­ted-ring (hi, jen_tlemnfarmer). I star­ted to post some more sens­it­ive diary-style posts, my wor­ries and insec­ur­it­ies. I star­ted to exper­i­ment with LJ as an invit­a­tion mechanism.

I became very aware of which posts were in the public domain and trying to main­tain the intellectual/political/poetical bent in that space so that a com­plete stranger hap­pen­ing upon the journal would encounter a con­sist­ent (inso­faras a self can be con­sist­ent, which isn’t much IMHO) space, like a magazine. That means how­ever, that those privy to the private stuff are even more likely to see the con­tra­dic­tions and cracks in this façade.

I’ve been chat­ting with fizit and Cath­er­ine recently about self-esteem and where we get it from. A lot of mine was from having a job I thought was respect­able. Some of the rest comes from being per­ceived as smart. Yes­ter­day, I posted a para­graph I came across in my thesis, worked on a little, thought it was good. It’s an act of expos­ure to put it up here to be cri­ti­cised by people who actu­ally know this theory better than me, in part because it reveals me as someone who does­n’t actu­ally know as much as I seem to. I’m not a genius. Sure, I went to a select­ive school, but I was about 60th out of 120 girls most years.

Anyway, it intrigues me that I’m now more pre­pared to make a post like this one in public. It’s still craf­ted and con­trived, but it acknow­ledges per­sonal con­nec­tions, ref­er­ences private con­ver­sa­tions, refers to my fin­an­cial situ­ation (unthink­able at the begin­ning of this journal) and would­n’t be pub­lish­able in a non-com­munity form, which was one of my ini­tial cri­teria for post­ing in public (‘Would I be pre­pared to have this be pub­lished as part of my writings?’).

How has your use of LJ changed over time?

EDIT: com­ments now allowed. that was an acci­dent. Thanks to frou_frou for point­ing it out.