Origin Of Retro-Blogs

The majority of the posts I have made, and may yet make, which are indicated to be a "Retro-Blog" were written between 1977 and 1987, one youthful and tumultuous decade out of  my 52 relatively mundane years, and compiled into a boxed set of 11 volumes, numbered one through twelve, skipping eleven because I had some inexplicable problem with the number eleven at the time, yet just as inexplicably I had no problem with there being a page eleven in every volume.  The title of this collection of some 687 hand photocopied pages is simply "I".  It was commissioned in 1987 by a friend of mine who had seen a smaller volume of selected works and wanted to have the "complete works".  Only three physical copies were made, one each for my benefactor, myself, and another friend who I believe also contributed funds.

The page count of 687 isn't nearly as much writing as one might think, given that many pages are line drawings, collages, and other visual works and artifacts.  The density of words per page varies widely as well, as much of it is poetry, and most of it is presented in photocopied facsimile of original formats, which varied widely in format and print density.  The only works to be manually transcribed to digital form and neatly printed were those that were in my nearly unreadable handwriting, or were written specifically for the collection to provide context.  Of those, no digital copies remain, so this retro-blogging is a by-product of a halfhearted new effort to digitize the entire collection.  It has all been scanned to multiple PDF documents, which have in turn been processed through an OCR engine and saved as rtf documents.  Not surprisingly, only a fraction of the OCR efforts rendered text that could be read with a reasonable amount of editorial repair.

I should also point out that the vast majority of the writing is simply dreadful, and only a few comparatively less dreadful selections will be presented publicly as a Retro-Blog or in any other form.

I promise I am very nearly as bored of writing about this as you are of reading about it.

This is where I would normally bemoan the the lack of readers of these blogs, but I am well past caring.  I know my place in the world, and the insignificance of my undisciplined works of writing.  I care just enough, maybe, to carry on posting this evidence of a younger and more energetic version of myself, for awhile.  I don't know exactly why, but I have theories, which I don't care to explore at this moment.

On occasion my Retro-Blog entries may mine sources other than the "I" of 1987, primarily saved copies of entries from my now defunct Facebook "notes" and MySpace blogs.  Of that, there is probably nothing even marginally interesting beyond 2009.  Time and failure and 4 1mg doses of Clonazepam a day have dulled my wits and eroded the edges of my psyche.  I barely have enough delusion of self worth to remain alive, much less write, which begs the question of why I am doing this right now.

Retro-Blog 1982 (age 19): Mommy Video

MOMMY VIDEO

Mommy Video - Daddy Video
You've taught me all I know of the world
     from my black-and-white memories
     to my Technicolor dreams

You've made me what I am
Please make me part of what you are

Grab me by the eyes and pull me in
Soak me up through your phosphor dots
Feed me back through your electron guns
Modulate me on your carrier wave
Send me back through the ether
             to where it all began 

Store me on reels of video tape

Mommy Video - Daddy Video 
Take me home

[Editorial Note 2015 (age 52): The technology described here remained pretty much unchanged from the earliest days of television in the mid-twentieth century until the relatively recent mandated transition to digital broadcast in 2009, and around the same time the transition from CRT tubes to solid state imaging devices for television was well underway.  I'm not sure how I would write this in terms of current television technology in the United States.  For all I know there are some parts of the world that still use analog broadcast and CRT displays.  

You may notice that the "Retro-Blog" entries are so far all clustered around 1977 (age 14) and 1982 (age 19).   For reasons about which I may speculate at a later time, a large amount of my written output is clustered around these years, but eventually I will post equally unremarkable works from other years.  For now, this was just something I could put out quickly to maintain my self-imposed discipline of daily postings until I run out of material that I am willing to expose to an imaginary public.

As an aside, no matter how confident any scientist or technician may sound, nobody knows how radio, and thus television, really works at the most fundamental level.  We know how to build devices that generate, encode, detect and decode radio signals, but we don't really know in real physical terms how the signal gets from the transmitter to the receiver.  This statement is virtually blasphemy in current western culture where Science has been degraded into a sort of religion for people who are too clever for metaphysics and too arrogant or afraid to admit that there are still things not yet known, or perhaps even unknowable.]

Retro-Blog 1982 (age 18): Empty Spaces

4:30 A.M. McMinnville Oregon 1/27/82

In this town there is a time when nothing is moving. Between the closing of the bars and the opening of the gas stations is a dead zone. Interstate truckers and travelers drone by on the highway just outside of town, while the old main street remains deserted, bright in the artificial illumination of streetlights and storefronts.

And the mannequins stand and stare across at flashing beer signs. And the horn of a distant freight train sounds as steel wheels clack across track joints.

The street carries on a robotic life while everyone sleeps. The traffic lights change with the thumping of relays, the transformers hum and the neon lights buzz, and a rotating sign squeaks like a perpetually closing door. The smaller sounds get louder at night.

The all-night restaurants and convenience shops are isolated islands of glare.  And the cats and dogs wander across the lawns and through the schoolyards.

In the newer part of town, a shopping center sprawls amidst its acres of asphalt parking space. And the hidden speakers blare on all night with distorted renderings of music from a period decades past.

[Editorial Note 2015 (Age 52): I have produced very few examples of what I would consider good writing.  This is because I have no process and no discipline.  The only good things that come from me are those which seem as if they created themselves and demanded that I bring them out.  This is one of those things.  There were very few preliminary notes, very few drafts.  It pretty much burst forth from my head fully formed, like Athena from the head of Zeus.  This rhythmic and alliterative little piece of prose also reflects my lifelong fascination with empty spaces.  More specifically, I have a fascination with empty spaces normally occupied by people, but encountered alone when all others have abandoned them.  I don't know if that means anything other than the obvious indication of my apparently self-imposed social isolation, which is perhaps a profound kind of selfishness.]

Retro-Blog 1977 (age 14): Nonsense, a poem in three parts

NONSENSE: A POEM

So He said to The Frog
"What is your name?"
And The Frog Said
"blerb"
with an exclamation point


          NONSENSE: MIDDLE PART

          So He says to me
          He says
          "blerb"
          with a question mark
          And I say to Him
          I say
          "Your existence means nothing to me!"


                    NONSENSE: CONCLUSION
                 
                    So He said to The Frog
                    "What is The Meaning Of Life?"
                    And The Frog died
                    period



[Editorial note 2015 (age 52): This was my first poem.  I have no idea why, at age 14, I became possessed of the conceit that I was a poet, having no knowledge of traditional or contemporary ideas of form, which may be obvious.  Nonetheless, every manual typewriter keystroke was deliberate, including line spacing and use of capitalization.  Many drafts were written and discarded.  I still like this poem.  I miss this early version of myself who had just discovered he could give himself unilateral permission to be creative, and to define what form it would take.  I'm very glad that, unlike most 14-year-old poets, I did not apply my efforts to nauseating love poems and songs.  That would come a few years later. 

By the way, Blogspot is taking random liberties with my line spacing and I am still trying to figure out how to get full control of the formatting.  My old-school HTML skills, in which the most exotic constructs are tables and the concepts of spans or CSS were as yet undreamt, don't help much with the way things are done here.]

Retro-Blog 1982 (age 19): I Have Always Been This Way

Hayward California, November 1982

I'm concerned and insecure about things right now

Not simply about comforts and finances

I'm confused about my personal value and worth

About the value of any human and all humans

I'm questioning what the concept of "value" means to me

Because right now I feel very worthless and very small

Very insignificant

And it does not feel good at all

It also does not feel right

And I draw a distinction there

Between subjective good and objective right

Although I cannot be sure that this distinction itself

is not wholly subjective

Once the frame-of-reference has been found questionable

the whole structure falls apart

This is what has happened to me

Why do I feel a need to feel worth and significance?

I doubt that I could even adequately define

what I mean by those words

And what of this need for happiness?

It, too, seems to exist somewhere within reality

Yet beyond definition

My intellect tells me that happiness

or a sense or an attitude of happiness

would only be possible if I were to close off

certain perceptions and avenues of inquiry and reflection

This state would not only be objectionable

But also quite impossible to maintain reliably

As experience has proved

It seems that the centralized “self”

and the homogeneous "all"

are irreconcilably variant concepts

A workable proof to the contrary would be most welcome

I desperately need it, in fact

Thus far, the joyless and inaccurate assertions of psychology

and the abstract and verbose mazery of philosophy

and the hypocrisy and silly self-serving

dervishing metaphysics of religion

have failed to provide anything of substance

[Editorial Note, 2015 (age 52): Among the few things to have changed since this writing is that now feeling worthless and small and insignificant feel "right" or "normal".  I don't know if I am more mature, more broken, or simply more adequately medicated, but I am no longer distressed by the idea that I am not God's gift to the world.  It is, in fact, comforting to know that I need not expect any more of myself.  As a further note to the imaginary reader about these retro-posts: they are not likely to be chronological, although sub-sequences of closely related materials may be.]

Living video past.

I have become somewhat of an expert at living in the past.  One decade in particular fascinates me most: 1993-2003.  I have a large collection of NASATV footage, both on VHS and digital hard drive recordings from that period.  I also have a large collection of mostly VHS Mystery Science Theater 3000, from that period, much of it with the original promos and commercials.  Finally, I have many complete evenings of Adult Swim from the early 2000s with no edits, unfortunately mostly in 320x240 mpeg1.  Much, if not most, of the VHS content has since been captured to digital.

I have a high capacity SD card dedicated to days worth of this programming encoded as mp4 in 320x240, and a tiny little set-top box that will play a selected directory in a continuous loop.

With my gradually failing eyes, at a distance of some 10 feet from the 32" LCD screen, it doesn't look much different than it did on the NTSC CRT screens on which it was originally viewed.

I also inhabit times in which I never lived.  The 1920s fascinate me in particular, and I have a pretty good collection of short avant-garde and epic scale motion pictures from that period, as well as a lot of the symphonic music of that time.  And the golden age of Warner Brothers cartoons, minus the most racist shorts, is as much a part of my life as if I had lived when they were made.

The practice of living in the past is often maligned as being intrinsically, fundamentally, wrong.  A weakness.

Let me be weak.  Let me fail at contemporary life in peace.  I am old.

I see little about the present that elevates in from the past.  I see very little difference of substance in the entire sweep of human history.  In varying places and varying times, cultural freedoms and excesses, adventure and discovery, which we regard as exclusively contemporary, thrived with an intensity that puts today to shame.

I have lived long enough now to remember several iterations of  "people were so dumb back then; we are so much more enlightened now", and I look at these times and this culture and I wonder, really?  Have you really come so far?  Some things have jumped ahead, while others have fallen behind.  Where, for example, did optimism go?  Where did any form of futurism other than the post-apocalyptic variety go?

Enough overly tired ranting from this old man.  I need sleep, and dreams.

The Illusion of Freedom (from Facebook)

For the second time, I have deactivated my Facebook profile.  The first time I was naive enough to think it was permanent.  This time, I wonder if I will have the resolve to actually request a permanent removal.

Out of some two hundred, there were less than five people with whom my Facebook interactions could be construed to be analagous to the interactions of actual friends. Perhaps another another 5 or 8 were analagous to acquaintanceship.

I am being generous.  To myself.

To maintain this much semi-regular human contact, I found myself fashioning a version of myself edited to be acceptable to what I perceived to be an increasingly intolerant and narrow-minded peer group.

This is what people do.  It is normal in non-Facebook interactions as well.

I do not object to it, I simply find it difficult and fatigueing, and I am not very good at it. 

An often repeated anecdote of mine is when my then-employer told me I had "an honesty problem", by which he meant that I was too honest too often and it was causing problems.

I don't work any more, thankfully.  I am not as sure how thankful I am that I no longer have non-Facebook human interaction with anyone other than immediate family, and even that is for a small minority of the hours in a given day or week.

All things considered, including past history, this is probably all for the best.

I did not remove myself from the synthetic society of Facebook in at attempt to force myself into participating in more direct human interaction.  I removed myself because, as mentioned, I was failing to participate in a consistently correct manner, and my failures, or more specifically the responses to my failures, were becoming more painful than I was willing to continue to endure.

The only additive behavioural change I am hoping for is more time applied to other kinds of writing, such as this blog, where I do not need to concern myself with who I might alienate with what I say.

I choose a public blog instead of a private journal simply because I cannot motivate myself to write without at least having a credible basis for imagining that I am writing to some kind of audience.  That sounds egotistical because it is.  I see no point in being apologetic about having an ego as it seems to be a fundamental part of being human, and a minimal requirement for believing that there might be a reason to proceed to the next day.   I suspect that many of the people who lose the will to proceed to the next day are people who have lost all perceptible sense of ego.