Hi, sorry I haven't been around for a while...I've been busy and lacking inspiration. I'm having a blogger dilemma. Perhaps more appropriately, I am suffering from a bad case of blog boredom. I am one of those people who follows many a famous, big hit fashion blog, but I have just about stopped reading all of them. There are a select number of blogs that I look for on my dashboard which I find interesting, funny, inspiring (you know who you are - if I am following you and you are not a 'world famous' blogger then don't worry, I like your blog!) but none of these top blogs are any of these things. All they are is hundreds of photos of themselves in vintage or more often pseudo vintage (my arch enemy) clothing, or photos of themselves and their boyfriends/husbands frolicking around on holidays, while we are constantly reminded about how wonderful their life is.
Thanks. I find this most interesting.
It is starting to drive me insane. I find that the blogging world suffers from a serious case of copy-cat syndrome. It is odd that 99% of these top bloggers some of whom have many hundreds or thousands of followers, most of the time dress in the same way and blog about things in the same manner, which is why it becomes boring if you are someone like me who looks for a unique voice/sense of style. I am not saying that just because your blog is highly popular that it is automatically bad, obviously people must start somewhere and perhaps some of the smaller blogs that I like will become famous in the future, but it does seem as though the blogging world, like the real world, highlights people who conform, not people who have the guts to be different.
So should we feel sad that only 5% of bloggers appreciate our blog? No, absolutely not.
Last year I was forced to take a compulsory class as part of my major, (which I despised at the time, but have since come to realise was more helpful than I ever thought it could be) where we looked at the philosophy of writing. Only one concept has stuck with me from this class, and that is Bourdieu's concept of 'art for art's sake'. In a nutshell, Bourdieu discusses the fact that 'high art' ie. modernist literature like Joyce's Ulysses is often unpopular or rejected by bourgeois society while it is bench marked by the elite as a seminal work of art and made as 'art for art's sake,' without economic gain. In contrast, things that are often popular amongst the status quo and hence economically successful are often seen to be crude or labelled as 'bad' art by the elite - the best example of this I think is Blockbuster Hollywood movies of today.
I think the analogy I am trying to make here is fairly obvious so I will leave it at that. But basically the purpose of this post is to say, I want to make my blogging more interesting, so I have decided to start a writing blog (I will probably keep posting on this one too) so I can write opinion articles about issues I find interesting, and begin my quest to improve my writing skills and enter the world of writing/publishing. This hasn't happened yet, but I hope to start it up soon. I've also posted the essay I wrote about Bourdieu's theory in relation to the 70s Punk movement as part of that class on a new page labelled Articles and Essays if you care to have a look.
In other news, Melbourne is currently full of giant reptile babies. I know, weird. It's for the annual Melbourne Festival. This is a picture of me in front of one baby. My friend S who took the photo says it looks like it is trying to do yoga.
Thanks for reading.
