Censorship?!? Nevah!

If there was no one else who reads this blog, would I have written any differently? I guess. There's this sense of selective communication here that is similar to the way we (fine, I) interact with other people. Did I delete those posts I typed about my obsessive miserly behavior and the other one where I was bitching about some Best Singaporean blog thing because I felt they were pretty inane, or did I want to hide the darker fringes of myself?

I would love for this blog to be a pure undulated representation of myself but that would probably resulted in information overload for my dear friends. I'm sure nobody really wants to know when I go to class, when I come home, whether I took a nap...the likes. I would probably bore myself to death first. Imagine, that was the grocery list style that I had when I first started a diary at 13. So yeah, I already have a whole book full of what I ate for breakfast and who wore what color that day. Don't need another one thank you.

Censorship is definitely an issue in many blogs. How much are you willing to tell? How can you restrict access to different levels of intimate material to different people? Often, a blog is like a free peep-show into another's life. Between friends, it's a channel to keep in touch (remember when emails used to be the thing for doing that) A blog is so personal yet so public. Sometimes, I wonder about the random people who hops pass my blog. It's a funny feeling when someone you don't know about reads about you and whatever snippets of your life you're willing to share. How much of you do they actually know? While they know not about the length of your hair or your features, they know a lot more than most passing acquaintances. Somehow, there's something intimate, yet distant.

To so many bloggers, blogs offer them their 5 minutes of fame, sans the embarrassment of failure, a la William Hung. It's a springboard for budding writers where they can start building up a loyal base of readership. What is it really to me?

When I was in my teens (god, I can actually say that now. Not that I want to, I think. I still can't decide if I really actually want to grow up. Granted that it really doesn't matter what I think. Time has a will of its own) I contemplated being a writer. But at that time, it was for all the wrong reasons, I had something to prove. Whatever it is, I can't remember. I do remember however, the symphony of the soul as words are conjured from the tips of my fingers (namely the index and middle fingers since I type with only a pair of each) They come in torrents, sometimes trickles, but regardless, it is a lovely feeling.

I am not artistically endowed. Whatever talents I had at art was crushed when my sister grouchily supervised my nascent attempts at painting. She was ferocious. Partly because she would rather spend her time doing something else. I remember holding a slender paintbrush, a dilemma in my hands. To paint or not paint? As the brush was pressed on the thin drawing pad, it was always wrong; when it lingered, a sharp voice would berate me for its tardiness. Either way, I was on the losing end. As a coddled child, I was practically banned from doing any serious with needles or saucepans. Sometimes I wish I could sew my own dresses or cook up a storm. Just like the times when I wish pigs could fly.

Thus, the ability to produce something I felt was beautiful was in itself beautiful (the engineer side of me will interject unpoetically, “Recursion!”“Infinite loop!” Ignores.The.Engineer.)

And so I write. Does it matter if it has “mass appeal”? Nopes. Does it matter if nobody likes it? Nopes. Do I like it? Yes. So there I have it, the reason for the scrunched up entries. Not so much an attempt at censorship but artistic frustration at their imperfection. (I suddenly remember one of the other reasons I wrote: breaking down my thoughts into logical processions. I’m otherwise too easily distracted and tend to lose my train (or a traffic-jam auto-chain. Haha. Not funny…) of thought.

Song of the Moment: DJ Tiesto -- Sweet Memory