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July 31st 2007 an advice for free >

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Q. what else can i say? well, an advice for free: you could avoid people commenting, so you won't know how your readers are alike and you won't be disappointed by them.

A. Why, mr. Girogio, I get two comments a month when I'm lucky, what difference would it make? Plus, I do want to know people's feelings about what I write. To me, this is one of the few good reasons left for blogging... If anything, I am tired of my unknowns to be so silent. But I don't want to really change anything, or to really complain about anything. I write so little, with such difficulty. And I'd rather stop writing in public than close the comments down. To quote that supposed anonymous blogger (which isn't anonymous, really) in the previous post was just a way to lash a feeling out, that's all.
I don't know if this happens to the others too, if it happens to you. I think it is the impressions you accumulate with time. I think that I will never know how my readers are like -- but I keep growing involuntary feelings about them, how they are and how they are not, layers of impressions, probably false, that can worn out the relation with this theoretical readership, and with the general idea of writing "for the readers". Especially when writing terrifies you because it became so darn serious and personal and exposing. Which is the reason for the other quote... I think. It probably was there for those who were supposed to understand it. Although I am not so sure anymore [goes on mumbling incoherently]


February 15th 2007 in defense of commentators, follows-up >

because I like the strain that came out with it, all pissed off, I decided to quote myself from a comment I just made here. Always in defense of commentators:

...I never read Genna's blog... but I read the post you talk about. I totally disliked it. Patronizing and bossy. And really exaggerated. He wants us not to do this way, he wants us to do the other way... typical italian famous blogger. He seems convinced that the simple fact of deciding to have a role as "the one who writes the posts" vs. "the one who writes comments" makes you special. What an ass. The point is not "creating content". It all depends on the quality of the content you create. Or the honesty of it. And if your posts are dishonest, they can still give you many readers and many comments. Or not. So what that proves? Nothing. If you're dishonest you can get a lot of pointless comments that sneer at you. In that case the comments are probably better than the content. (Comments are a different kind of content too, so the whole pretext is stupid anyway.)
I think he's putting those who provide content on a pedestal only because he's one of them.
And he compares writing comments to vomiting! He can go to hell as far as I'm concerned.
And anyway. Nobody seems to conceive spontaneity as something more than anarchy to be regulated. That's so wrong. The way I see it, spontaneity is the only decent fertile common ground we should try to preserve, and let be. Montessori wasn't on the mille lire for nothing.

ps. thanks to maateo for providing the occasion. Hell, in a vomiting comment.
pps. In a totally unrelated issue, I want to notify that I have worked it out with the "write" page. Now it actually serves the purpose to write to me. Oh, and there's also a "phrases" page now. Always just in case you were interested.

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the milanese lamp post
Admit that you're living in a country entirely furnished by the previous generations: that your opinions were hired, rented were the images of your world.
-- Ingeborg Bachmann



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  • dam's broke, / head's a / waterfall. / taken from 3quarksdaily

  • Most people, I would imagine, would simply drive on. She did not; she stopped the bus, followed me half a block up the street, and demanded to know why I’d been taking pictures of her, and insisted that I erase them. She was firm; I was surprised and incoherent. But after a moment of confusion, I managed to show her that I had not, as it happened, managed to catch her on film, showing her most of my pictures in the process. At first she was hostile, an avenging angel, but she relaxed as we went through my digital roll, huddling over the tiny light of my view-finder on a dark empty street. / taken from zunguzungu

  • The summer after Hearst's trial, Star Wars was released and immediately became a pop sensation. America now preferred its captives to be self-willed self-rescuers. Rambo would soon grace movie screens; Ronald Reagan would soon be president. And Patty Hearst would go to jail, a harbinger of our new age of "personal responsibility." What was a captive supposed to do? The jury decided: she was supposed to just say no. / taken from That Girl: The Captivity and Restoration of Patty Hearst (Page 2)

  • According to researchers at Oxford University, playing the popular, classic puzzle game Tetris after a traumatic experience could significantly reduce emotional scars. / taken from Health: Tetris Wipes Out Bad Memories, Say Scientists

  • Still, the clothes are fantastic. / taken from sit down man, you're a bloody tragedy: A trial

  • W.'s always admired my whining, 'like a sad chimp, at the limits of its intelligence', but my depression took me beyond that, didn't it? You were silent for once, W. says. I didn't ring him, or respond to emails ... No chatter from me: that's when he knew things were really bad, says W. / taken from Spurious

  • Most writers would be searching for equivalents – “I mused,” or “I considered” or “it occurred to me.” Not Bernhard. He even sticks to the same order: if he’s settled on “Reger said,” chances are you’re not going to be reading, “said Reger.” Just the pounding of the one attribution, over and over and over again. It becomes a kind of report, like a gunshot or a hammer blow. Either the nail is long or the wood – maybe our blockheads – exceptionally unyielding. / taken from THE CHAGALL POSITION: Thomas Bernhard's Report

  • In the seventh grade I moved the family typewriter into my bedroom to begin work on my screenplay. It was a very moving romantic comedy intended to feature a monkey, Simon LeBon of Duran Duran and the well-known actress Bess Armstrong whom I’d seen in my favorite movie of the 6th grade, High Road to China. / taken from 2007 Things «

  • Heard the alarm clock screaming with pain, / Couldn't find myself so I went back to sleep again / So fill my ears with silver / Stick my legs in plaster / Tell me lies about Vietnam. // taken from the swiss lounge: adrian mitchell

  • Furthermore, as anybody who recently has endured the indignity of a traffic stop can attest, police in most jurisdictions routinely inquire as to whether there are weapons in the car. (In my most recent traffic stop, the officer asked, “Are there any weapons in your car I need to know about?” “No, none that you need to know about,” was my immediate response.) / taken from Pro Libertate: "Question 46," Revisited

  • An idea has only to be something you have not thought of before to take over the mind, and all afternoon I kept hearing in my mind snatches of books which might exist in three or four hundred years. / taken from Helen DeWitt, The Last Samurai, from THE CHAGALL POSITION: Relations of Notes

  • The endgame will culminate in the creation of an Eretz Israel by which time the Palestinian entity will be the substance of myth, nurtured only in poetry and song, some tears and some faded old maps. There are not even many Mahmoud Darwish' around to write about this pain. The fountains of sadness are sprouting blood, the insane cries for help are falling on deaf ears, at this time poetry and Literature seem superfluous, including my naive post. / taken from THOUGHTS OF XANADU: What the Zionists want

  • ho una crisi di rigetto per il mio corpo lo sento dimenarsi organico e vagare e circumnavigare gli aspetti delle città dietro i finestrini oscurati dalla velocità, una linea rossa cavalco e sono già oltrepassato a cavallo del futuro limato dalle foto che scorrono al rallentatore davanti a questi occhi masturbati dalla bellezza, la finestra è lì e lei è lì / taken from XIII « only gravity

  • He’s thin and tall and you can see that his hands have been working for a long time. He’s chopping the thick mean ice in front of the church. “That’s tough work today,” I say. He stops and looks up, leaning on the long stick of the icebreaker. “Yes it is. But lookin’ at you,” he says, “I got me some new energy.” / taken from on the corner « Municipal Archive

  • The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects ‘unfamiliar’, to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged. Art is a way of experiencing the artfulness of an object; the object is not important." / taken from Shklovsky, "Art as Technique" via MUSINGS ON HANDKE’S PROSE


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