Anyone with a deep, abiding affection for paper of all sorts — books, notes, letter, medieval manuscripts, etc. — may get a prickly feeling when thinking about writing on the internet. In terms of permanence, it seems like inscribing your fond thoughts on a soap bubble. What are those mysterious, transient digital signals that lie beneath this webpage, these scraps of writing? Incomprehensible pulses that represent the mental energy of your head transmitted, via digital alchemy, to the great “out there”? It’s quite intangible, almost unreal.
Well, seemingly. Maybe it’s a process of settling in, now that the internet is an inescapable, and even cherished, part of daily living. With that coziness comes the realization that in this great “out there” of the internet, the lifespan of things can operate on a different scale than the tangible world. So here we are, back on the blog. After all, there are now services that will make a final status update to Facebook page after you’ve died, so why not pump some life back into an old site?
Funny enough, it’s hard not to conceive of this site as a physical space. In my own imagination, it’s like a summer house, or a place that you spent a lot of time at in the past, but closed up for a while. The windows are a little foggy with dust, filtering sunshine with a yellowish haze. The generous array of furniture is covered over with ghostly white sheets. The air smells stale with waiting. That’s what this site conjures in my mind; it’s been shut for a while, but at least the keys still work in the door (read: we still have the password).
With a little cleaning of windows, whipping the sheets off the furniture, organizing some fresh flowers, voila – it’s a functioning space again.
That’s not so say that when returning to a place, you come back the same. You and everything else are always a bit different as new memories form an overlay for the old. So this opening up of STI is decidedly casual. There are ideas and intentions, and an impulse to have a space for art writing that may not be easily categorized — a little unruly, on-topic but with random bits thrown in, free-form and flowing.
So with that, welcome back.
~Kat Murrell
Excellent! It’s nice to have you back.
I completely understand your sentiments, the whisp of the ephemeral in online writing, the uncertainty of it all. But that’s life, after all, isn’t it?
As opposed to Art, which is supposed to endure.
If the world that we write in is virtual, does that make the content any less real?
Eddee
Ah, so poetic and philosophical you are! Right, the content and the idea are their own disembodied things, but still with substance. At least, hopefully. All in all, it’s nice to bring it out to the light of day.
And BTW – your recent post on Art Without Borders was lovely — thanks for writing about Urban Eden! I had no idea it was there and am looking forward to a trip to see it.
Good going, Kat. I look forward to seeing what else you have to say. You say it so well.
Thanks so much, Fred! I look forward to seeing more of your paintings.