The internet is like a swamp and other metaphors

The internet is a fickle thing. (Could I have come up with a more inane opening line? The alternative is to lead straight into my point, like a news article, but I prefer to string you along. Also this is not news.) So is language, really. Once, our teacher started a game: the class was to create a long sentence by working together. Each person in the chain had to add one word to the phrase - then clause - then sentence - then complex sentence - then mass of meaningless statements.

I have written myself into a patch of swamp. Because if the internet is like that game, my blog is a handful of mud. On the bright side, rather that than one of those deep-sea eyeless fish.

What I mean is that - oh gosh, here's another swamp - the internet is in a sense (note the catch-all disclaimer, folks, and that includes third-party insurance) a demonstration of democracy. Listen before you start throwing things. The game was also a bit like democracy. Everyone adds their two cents with minimal censorship. (I mean, if we'd started adding swearwords, I guess the teacher would have stopped us. Maybe washed our mouths out. Is that even allowed nowadays? Because it was pretty effective.)

In about 2009, Penguin Books hosted an international experiment. They were going to enable internet users to write and edit a novel, and they would publish it. There were forums and guidelines and some limits (otherwise a user could stop sleeping and eating for three days and pound out the bulk of the novel, in theory. Less than theory, in my books (har har) - have you met some of these internet junkies?) All intellectual property rested with them.

The experiment drowned in the swamp of the internet. (And media studies grads everywhere yelled, Told ya' so. We love being right. Because it happens so rarely.) Perhaps they overestimated internet users or language or democracy (there, I said it). Proof that James Joyce didn't just pound out random strings of words, two out of five of which make sense. (It's more like four.) That's not the point though.

The writing was a mash of meaningless statements, that were over-edited (or under-edited depending on how you look at it). Forums were filled with sensitive writers (we're all sensitive) whose work has been 'completely decimated'. (I never partook of the experiment FYI. I prefer to stand on the sidelines and criticise. Constructively. And then feel guilty.) We all became commentators and the project shut down ahead of deadline. Penguin sent out a press release saying they wouldn't publish the novel, but it was there on the website to look at, because we had all learnt valuable things about publishing and the internet.

Now, I can't find the site or any references to it, despite a creative assortment of keywords and Google's ability to know what I meant to search rather than what I did. And I can't remember the name of the darn thing. I have just learnt something about the internet: you can delete all trace of something embarrassing - contrary to the logic that the internet remembers everything and that Google is the set of neuron receptors that lead to the memory.

Hence the internet being a fickle thing, and language too. And James Joyce a genius. (Stop throwing things! Huh, at least its a bushel of broccoli rather than - nevermind.)

Perhaps the experiment would have worked if Penguin had retained its role as a gatekeeper, as it would with print novels. For example, you could have gradings of editors, determined by a series of tests and their editing of the manuscript. They could operate as a hive, with a mediator at the top, verifying the above. Hang on, that's how Distributed Proofreaders, which does the OCRing, editing and proofreading for Project Gutenberg, works and have done for years (I started volunteering in 2005).

Hmmmm I feel there is a lesson here. I can't quite grasp it through the mud. No wait, I'm just heightening the suspense. I always know where My Point is. Always. Always. Always. Does democracy in practice mean anarchy? If you want to destroy the system, be prepared for the backlash. And I say this as a sympathetic anarchist. Even challenging the system and redeveloping marshland where the capitalist gatekeepers built their monuments needs project management. Else you're going to be left with half-demolished building in a pool of mud, like in Planet of the Apes.

Now, I'm always telling you that I'm the dictator here and so I can say and do as I wish (I can't but anyway), but I am just a handful of mud in the swamp. No one quotes me in essays and other such vaguely objective things (heavens above, please don't. Although I'd like to be a credible source one day, I'd prefer if you don't quote me using mud as a metaphor. Rather follow me on Twitter and like my posts). And I abide by Blogger's rules, some of them imposed by the design, others by mediators. (But apparently not on spambots.)

Now that I have gotten to My Point (which I always knew was here. Always. Always. Always) I am not sure I agree with myself.  Rules and processes develop for a reason (mostly through trial and error), though some rules and processes have passed their expiry dates and deserve to be broken. Often it takes a skilled gatekeeper to know the difference. Honestly, I'd prefer to have a gatekeeper there to stop children from wandering off at night, and thieves and such wandering in.

But back to business: an experiment requires an hypothesis, guidelines, a process and a placebo. Without these, what do you expect to get except chaos? Do you actually expect to get chaos? Or is this an experiment in chaos? Do you mean to prove that gatekeepers are necessary? Why then has the internet erased all trace of such experiment?

I am overthinking this. Luckily, you probably haven't been able to keep reading through this ridiculously long post. So I can say without recrimination that the democratic nature of the internet sometimes just encourages meaninglessness and chaos. (You get the hint that the same applies to true democracy.) And that this shouldn't always be encouraged or even just played with. I wonder whether, had some more vigorous rules been applied, and perhaps withdrawn in stages, Penguin might actually have come up with something publishable, as well as some useful information.

The Historian and The Swan Thieves

What do William Shakespeare, Charlotte Bronte and Elizabeth Kostova have in common? Yes, they are all part of a Western aesthetic tradition, but so arguably are their 'ethnic' cousins. Yes, they all do have an 'a' in their first names. Schooling turns all of us into tame dogs, sitting to attention and staring hopefully when someone asks a question or utters a command, that the same someone will give us the answer, too, maybe a biscuit. So please, lean a little forward while I answer this uncontextualised and open question myself.

(I planned this.)

Here is what I learnt in three years of studying English literature: The Bible was the first printed work but plebs weren't allowed to (and couldn't) read said holy book. (Meaning that the priests could say whatever they wanted and so they did. Want to go to heaven? Pay me 500 shekels and I'll put in a good word. That's a good rate! This book here says 600 is the price for your soul. Limited time offer.)

Then along came Martin Luther (the German one), who nailed a piece of paper to the door that said that even the plebs should be allowed to read the Bible (even if they wouldn't because they had other things to do, like not starve) and see what the price of their souls are (unfortunately, there is no price list, but if you confess your sins, the priest will translate your sins into prayers for you). People died for the democratisation of the media. Just be glad the same hasn't happened with digital media. Oh wait, didn't someone just hang himself for this?

Luther's revolution is the Reformation. The Reformation is a handy bookmark for the rolling stone ancestry of contemporary literature, for today known as Post-modernism. Because like all good christenings, we name the baby after it has grown into an old person. This is when people realised that all that is written is not gold. (Gold is heavy. Even the Hulk would struggle with a bag full of this stuff. Maybe that's the real reason it's so valuable?)

But that was the German Reformation. Across the sea, England's revolution involved an obese wife-murderer and adulteress (do you know there is no male form of the noun?! Except expletives) swapping Catholicism for Protestantism. Anyway, the point is that Europe is not one cultural entity, with a single history, any more than Africa is. Everyone hear me?

Screen adaptation of Hamlet, 1990

So, the stone rolled into William Shakespeare and his infamous ilk, Christopher Marlowe. Both wrote and directed plays (a step ahead of the cops, because anything that didn't make money for the Crown was illegal. Kinda like the priests and their bribes) and plays (like movies, for the young 'uns) require a certain amount of suspension of disbelief. Like in The Tempest (one of my least favourites fyi), we don't believe there is a ship, a storm and an island on the stage (duh, it's only big enough for one of those things).

Despite the haunting tragedies of Hamlet and Faust, Shakespeare and Marlowe were funny and self-deprecating (ok, no, not Marlowe) men. Like Luther handing round the Bible, these men wrote plays that spoke about themselves and addressed the audience directly. In Hamlet and A Midsummer Night's Dream, for example, the characters stage their own plays, within the play, making us think about the nature of this play that we are watching. The one we paid (or were given comps) to see.

The Dessert: Harmony in Red (the Red Room), Henri Matisse, 1908

The two men die and enrich the soil, and Charlotte Bronte springs into being in an English moor somewhere. I have written all of this garbled and probably left of history post to get here. Charlotte Bronte wrote Jane Eyre, that proto-feminist (yeah, right, and you'll see why), Gothic (but less so than Wuthering Heights, by her sister) novel that everyone studies in English undergrad. We slot both books in the Victorian shelf, above the Romantic shelf, which is a couple of shelves up from the Elizabethan shelf (stacked with Shakespeare's plays).

The stone of self-reflexism (it used to be a shard) has rolled down the slope and through many a Romantic novel. When it gets to the Bronte's house, it is gathering speed, and protective of their family (including an complex imaginary one that may or may not have survived their adolescence), all three give it a kick in turn, to make it spin faster. This metaphor has just become cryptic. Charlotte also uses her novel to think about itself - and I use the passive here for a reason.

Because she also asks us directly to break through the suspension of disbelief (that an orphan girl, much plagued by her cousin and prone to supernatural meetings, can become an au pair, fall in love with the father who feels the same way, and then discover his crazy (debatable) wife in the attic (I would also become crazy if you locked me in an attic. Crazy angry) and talk to the main character (which is itself a suspension of disbelief).

She says, just before the conclusion of the book: "Dear reader..." This book is not written in journal form, so... To reiterate, suspension of disbelief means involving yourself in the fantasy: there are no authors or readers or characters; for a certain period of time this fictional world and the assumptions necessary for it to exist (belief in ghosts or time travel or crazy women in attics) does exist. For the author or the character to talk to us, the readers, breaks that bond we all agreed to.

Interlude (perhaps make yourself some coffee and get a biscuit): this "Dear reader" is a plea for us to sympathise with Jane and accept her next set of choices. Feminist? Ha! If she has to plea, she considers herself guilty, so my judgement is unnecessary. But, just for the record, I do. I do judge.

What now? You figure it out. I wrote an essay on this, so you can work for the answer.

This is a long post, but Elizabeth Kostova writes long books and I have read the first and am reading the second, so you can read with me. Pay attention as you read and you will see 'Dear reader's sprouting from even the least fertile pages, like crime novels. Just splattered on the page like blood. Splattered, artlessly. I think Charlotte Bronte would rather move into the setting of Wuthering Heights, without Linton to bring some charm to it, than acknowledge these offspring.

I am reading The Swan Thieves at the moment. I mean 'reading' to imply that this is a long-term relationship and I am beginning to wonder whether the bumps and bruises are worth it. I can't say until I get to the end, so I can only rely on past history. This is not My Point, but the history is tedious, largely because of descriptions of people and places and trees and grass and hands and and and..., and because of the effeminate voice of the (male) main character and his tendency to fall in love with every woman he meets.

The history is also Kostova's first novel, The Historian. In hindsight the novel was probably also tedious and for the same reasons, but the main character is a) female (and therefore effeminate) and b) the daughter of a historian. The novel is a historical mystery novel and the mystery is the source of the legend of Dracula, which is fascinating no matter how many observations about hands, because each hand could provide a clue.

You can hear (not literally!) how worked up I am getting, right? Why? The protagonist follows a series of notes and letters, one of which begins: "To you, perceptive reader, I bequeath my history." My brain leaps the suspension bridge (har har) and I become the protagonist. Silly thing, it can't differentiate between the fictional 'you' and me 'you'. This is now my story and my inheritance, although I know I'm being manipulated, I see the bridge below me - but, wait, does this mean the protagonist is being manipulated too? We both know that Dracula is a novel built on an East European myth (all those countries being the same, right?). So what are we chasing?

Again, essay written, book read, your turn.

The history of literature is its own type of fiction. As is any history. I have identified what I want to see, to argue for the evolution of free thought in the Western world, as if this is a good thing. Well, really I'm arguing for a type of device used in literature that I find interesting and using history to support it. Or I am overthinking everything and writing tedious blog posts, and trying to justify my use of direct address, like 'you' and 'fool!'. Not that this fiction. Because I really think you should read Jane Eyre and agree she is not a feminist, or only a pseudo-feminist, and that maybe you should read The Historian because it's long but fun and engaging. There's even an audio book. Would the consequence of the direct address be the same in speech? Hmmmmm...

My impossible life as Jane Eyre

Hello, old friend. Why don't you ever age? We look alike but I have two wrinkles now (I swear the one appeared the morning of my 30th birthday), frown wrinkles, only on one side, the left, like my smile. No, my smile isn't one-sided, jokester; you know what I mean, it's crooked. Unbalanced, lopsided, displaced? Huh, another two differences where we thought there was none. (The second being your obliviousness to nuance. Not yours, hers.) From congruence, to similarity, to a single acquaintance in common.

What am I talking about? Who are you talking to?

Oh, her... I forget she's there sometimes. It's a bit creepy the way she stands behind me, staring over my shoulder at what I haven't done, so I prefer to let her entertain herself. While she's at it, she really could lend a hand, but if she moved, maybe the illusion of symmetry will backflip to, well, what's like symmetry (har!) but with less in common? A straight line. Perhaps. I'm not convinced.

We'd be less alike. I've covered this. Moving on.

Dissatisfaction. We're Generation D. 'The sky's the limit,' say rolly-polly creatures of cute, dopey babies and fogged landscapes caged in black frames or in handwriting poised improbably in mid-air. 'Shoot the moon and bruise yourself against stars' (FYI stars are waaaaay further away than the moon, so I'd advise you go for one or the other). 'There's no such thing as impossible.' (Uh, yeah there is. Walking to the moon unaided, for one. At the very least, there's improbable. The moon elevator, for two.)

It's the Care Bears' fault. My first piece of evidence is the style of the memes above. My second piece of evidence is that I cannot identify another such set of liars in my life. Preschool teachers are the last to whisper such things while they wipe bottoms. The ones I have met, anyway. Ask one. Tell her her kids are 'cute', that they can scrawl honeyed sayings, that they are set to walk to the moon and/or shoot it. I heard her snort on word two.

The Care Bears could slide down rainbows (another impossible feat) and shoot glittered things from their chests. Apart from the fact they were talking bears, they talked in much higher voices than even a Spectacled Bear's growl. Third piece of evidence and slam that gavel, You.

I don't want to be purple or furry or live on a cloud (impossible). I would however like what I was promised: everything. On second thought (not really, because we've talked about this before, you and I. Just nod) literature has to shoulder some of the blame for those ridiculous memes. Alice in Wonderland, The Enchanted Wood, Nancy Drew and the Secret Seven... Possession, The People's Act of Love, As I Lay Dying...

Life is the sum total of the possible. The possible is, in my experience, either horrible or boring. I'm not looking for much: just some Aristotelian tragedy, Gothic martyrdom and a Shakespearean script. How am I supposed to be Jane Eyre without a mad woman in the attic and the burnt ruins of my love? (I could do without Mr Rochester, the ridiculous man. I'll take Jason Bourne.) Yeah, thanks, Care Bears. Since you predate reading, you can slide this all back up that rainbow.

Ok, so possible. I'm gonna go with boring - it's the yellow card. Other side. Yes. My novel and I are pretending we don't notice the other, like two acquaintances who can't remember each other's names. My career... perhaps we all feel like we have more to give than anyone wants? The ideas are flying from our ears and hovering near the ceiling, but hey, at least they have wings. The absence of a personal life here is the absence of a personal life.

Generation D. Ah, and here's some tragedy to chew on: we don't give up. (That 'd' is a bit of a stretch, I grant you.) Even now, my spirit is rallying, tripping the tragic martyr who never ages from the stage. Care Bears swoop in, bearing their burdens, and shoot glitter at the darkness. They swap the yellow card for a purple one, but they confiscate the script. I'm allowed the impossible, provided it isn't literary.

You've got nothing to lose

"You've got nothing to lose." I used this one on myself a couple of months ago (a pep talk is not counted as talking to myself). Although not entirely true (do self-esteem, hope and happiness count as nothing?) it is very comforting. (After all, lots of things that are comforting aren't true. Fat-free yoghurt that is still yoghurt, pure English, democracy...) And if I didn't lose nothing, if I had lost everything - gained everything - gained nothing... Read between the lines, please. What would I have done?

Cliffhanger.

No, that's not what I would have done - how do you cliffhang? There is a lack of suspense-building, you. And here I had thought we had bonded. Is that how you cliffhang? By bonding yourself to a rock?

You always get what you want anyway: I would probably have run from Cape Town to Cairo, in order to cross the Suez and get to Siberia. That's as far as I could go. I have bad circulation. Also, wolves.

The same applies to my novel. In the amount of overtime I work, I could probably have written a novel, perhaps two, and my premature memoirs (you should really have done something interesting first). And when I come home, I have been researching and compiling a proposal for... a research grant? the greatest piece of literature ever? a novella? short story? preface? Nope. To line someone else's pockets.

I'm sure it's not lost on you that I'm blogging instead of writing. (Although I count this as a half hour of writing a week.)

I have a hypothesis.

HYPOTHESIS
Success is more frightening than failure.1
1 Erratum: sometimes2 more frightening
2 Smart, right?

METHOD
A. Review the above two anecdotes.3
3 Anecdotes are admissible because I say so and because else this blog post has already ended. Which would be disappointing. And definitely not a full half hour.
B. Consider a goal of your own and whether you have intentionally but sub-consciously scuppered it.

OBSERVATIONS

• Failure is sometimes4 the easier option. You know what to expect (worldwide anarchy) and you don't have to try so hard. To fail, simply stop doing.5

4 Smart, right?

5 It's in the dictionary. 'S true 's Bob.

• Success is difficult because then what? What do you do, how and for how long? Do you deserve it? Do other people think you deserve it? If you fudge it now, you have everything to lose. And so on goes your racing mind. Which would be so poignant if you were a racing driver. Be a racing driver. Who reads blogs. About books. Nevermind. Just befriend one.
• Sometimes that everything is your life. Like the racing driver. If he did nothing, he would die in a fiery wreck.

CONCLUSION
Success is sometimes more frightening than failure.

We seem to have drifted from Siberia to someplace over some ocean (I'm not very good at Geography). Or Astronomy apparently.

See, this blog post was meant to circle in on itself: fear of success is in our (completely independent and feral) minds. So is fear of failure. But in the case of Mr Racing Driver, fear of failure is necessary for success. Or at least, the absence of the concept of failure (replaced by the fear of Murphy's Law). Now instead of maneuvering this ship (it's a flying ship, a dirigible) (no, not the Hindenberg!) around the world to land gently where it first took off (seriously, there is no hydrogen on this thing! And no you can't have any helium - I don't care if you need it to survive this flight!), I have flown this thing into the Bermuda Triangle.

Oh look, there's Amelia Earhart!

Either Mr Racing Driver is an exception, or I should stick to specifics. In this specific instance, writing the rest of my novel is, well, frightening. If I don't write it, I simply carry on as I do now, towing regret and the question of what if? behind me. (This Hindenberg carries hydrogen.) I may not lose anything, but I gain a burden. And if I do write it, what's the worst that happen? (I knew it as I typed it. Look out for that blog post.) I knew my choice was to try before I typed it. Sometimes you need to look it in the eye first and then jump off that cliff.

Is that what cliffhanger means?

The Reading Challenge and space elevators

Goodreads has set me a challenge. Dully but practically called The Reading Challenge. Can you hear the rising crescendo of music that appears every time 'The' with a capital 'T' is used? Or is that in my mind?

Technically I set myself the challenge, but that was my past self, my January self. Since then I have discarded many skin cells, some brain cells (I hit my head - stabbed it, actually, into the edge of a wooden shelf) and have changed my mind about many things many times. Since that self exists only in memory and in my use of the site over time, Goodreads henceforth takes responsibility for my questionable choices. Precedence!

No, don't read that again! The logic is like rock, but not the kind you mine through. Just accept the conclusion on faith. This is a turning point in our relationship. Pseudo-relationship.

This past self of mine decided that I would read 1 book a week or 52 books this year. (Scoff not, you - think of me next time you pile your plate with more than you can eat!) Then Game of Thrones happened. Somewhere in the middle of that Agaat happened. Note to self: when entering a reading challenge, choose the short books, not tomes of 1 000 pages and more.

According to my rock-like logic, I am in February 2013. Which is great because February is my favourite month. Except that *revelation and more crescendoing* it's June. Not for much longer, but let's not think about that.

Just before I started this post, I discovered you can change the number of books your past self foisted on you. I am not a quitter. Ok, well, I am, but first I like to make the journey painful so that when I quit, my memory of my past self doesn't make me feel so bad. Instead, I shall read like... a voracious reader in the hopes of catching up those four months.

Shush. It's my plate and I can pile it to the moon if I want. No, actually, I can't. Not physically. Not until Google X or LiftPort or someone builds that elevator. The ceiling, then.

And if I don't make it... Will I crawl into a foetus-like ball and rock awkwardly? Will I run down the highway hysterically? Will I do something silly like invest in a crowdfunded space elevator? No. At the very last minute, I shall click on 'Update' and change the number to slightly less than I have read. The definition of cheating is all in how you view the problem.

Following from my last post, my new favourite perfumes are...

Cool Water - Davidoff (the men's fragrance)

Key Lime and Ginger/Gingerflower - Charlotte Rhys

I'm still thinking about Thierry Mugler's Cologne and Chanel's No. 5 and 19, though.