infrequent posts
The Power of Silence
After a lot of self-admonishment for my laziness and lack of discipline in keeping up with this blog, among other things, I have come to an epiphany: These admonishments are unhealthy thoughts that only reinforce the behaviour. Besides, they’re not really true.
The truth is, I only post when I have something interesting to say. I know that’s bad form, and contraindicated in the blogger’s handbook. You’re supposed to update frequently to keep your readers interested, and all that. But this isn’t a news site or a money-making operation. It’s just a quiet corner of the internet where I can post my thoughts, and where intrepid explorers of the digital back-woods can stumble upon them.
And anyway, what’s the point of updating your blog constantly if all you’re doing is distracting yourself and others by producing an endless stream of content? Sure, there are lots of entertaining and interesting daily blogs; but how much of that stuff do you actually read?—and if it’s a lot, then how do you get anything else done?
The great failing of the internet and the age of easy and instant communication is that it amounts, essentially, to a Tower of Babel. The volume of what our culture says is unimaginably grand. But it loses all depth and power. We’ve turned up the noise and lost the signal. We’re drowning in a polluted sea of information, unable to understand a single clear word, or the majestic simplicity of long-forgotten silence.
Do you see? Do you see how your voice—the voice in your mind and the voices all around you in the external world keep you tumbling, unfocused? The urge to speak is like a drug, a habit fueled by our need for attention, our anxious need to poke at the world and make it move; to steer things. We are prisoners of our own imaginations.
But if you can sit still for a moment; ask the voices to be silent, and just be… what unimaginable wonders open up! Do it now! Don’t think. You can think later. Just feel…
Yeah… So, um, subscribe to the RSS feed or something, but don’t feel like you have to check it every day, ’cause I’m not here that often. Peace!
UPDATE—A quick note about comments: if you do happen to stumble on metapunk and wish to leave a comment, please make it relevant. For a site with less than zero visibility, I get an obscene amount of comment spam. Most of it gets filtered, but I check the queue from time to time, and occasionally there are messages where I can’t quite tell if it’s a legitimate comment or just very subtle spam.
So, please, if you just stopped by and wanted to say something like “Great story,” please know that while I welcome the praise, I need some indication (at least in your first comment) that you’re a real person who has read the article. I hate having to request that of people, but like I said above, the signal to noise ratio on the internet these days is just crazy.
