THEORIES FOR BLOGGERS: SOLITUDE

A colleague once said that Fernando Vallejo,  the notorious Colombian writer, thought the world was his mirror; and it was a mirror that Constantin Cavafis, the Greco-Egyptian poet, used in order to reflect/recreate his ideas on youth and aging, knowledge and sense of self. 

The blogosphere is a contemporary mirror. It allows both reader and writer to interact at a faster speed, precision and closer discursive engagement than the old printing presses were  able to do. While the romantic bourgeoisie notion of the book, as essentially belonging in  the province and privacy of the reader and writer, still holds, and is used to criticize the new medium, the fact that virtual space is here and there at the same time, and used by quite a few readers and writers, all at once, cannot be avoided.

This blog is used not only to present the final product of particular pieces, but more so, to show the road suggested by Machado -”Caminante no hay camino, / se hace camino al andar”- and the stages lived by the author (my own “Vallegian moi”). These “Machadian” roads and stages are placed within the context provided by particular arguments, positions critiques and theories on learning to write and read. 

After a few years on the blog, earlier pieces (this one appeared for the first time a few years ago) are eliminated and new versions are presented/downloaded; some are completely eliminated and hopefully forgotten; quite a few come back haunting me like Billie Holiday’s “Solitude” or, if not, Maryanne Faithfull’s version. And if the mood requires sounds, but not words, there is always Duke Ellington’s.

Writing, reading, speaking and listening are not only about rules, context or intentions but often depend on the mood of the speaker/listener/writer/reader on the blogosphere; never alone, "In my solitude, you haunt me".