Begin The Beguine

I decided to jump into the world of blogging. Or maybe "world" is not the right phrase... blogging seems more like a raging river. So many different voices and feelings and ideas; exciting and new, boring and predictable.

I've been told by friends that I live my life as if I am floating on a river letting the current take me wherever. Close friends may know a person better than that person knows himself, but while I sometimes drift along, I do take action to choose which channel I float down, or which part of the river I float in. I must be doing something right as I've seen plenty, yet never have gone over the falls.

While looking at various blogs, vlogs, memes, ytmnd clips, mashups, it reminded me how I felt when I first watched cable TV at the beginning of the 1980s. Such an increase in channels and content. Going from 3 to 20+ channels doesn't seem like a lot, but think of the increase as a percentage.

I remember watching "Night Flight" late Friday and Saturday nights on the fledgling USA network. This is when the network had air time to fill but no real identity. "Night Flight" was a mash of music movies and videos, and what appeared to be art school short films and animated clips. Who knew what would be shown next! But it would usually be something different, unusual, odd, boring, raw, young. The potential was there for voices other than the big corporate networks of CBS, NBC, and ABC.

Within a few years "Night Flight" exhausted itself. They began to repeat regularly, and what ideas once seemed new now seemed to be old and rehashed, as if there wasn't anything new to express. And we all know what happened, cable became commercial. USA networks is now what? A network that reruns recent TV shows and movies? A cable channel that seems like a number of other cable channels?

Anyway, now seems to be the time to join the blogging world. I may be arriving at the party a little late, but it has not been tamed. It seems young and unpredictable where one can be exposed to energy, excitement, a promise of something new, and of voices different than my own. Now is the time before the online world too becomes homogenized and commericalized.

Here's to now, and to the future.