1. Blog
posts are aids to memory, a way to preserve thought like unfortunate insects in
amber.
2. Writing
clarifies thought. The act of articulation is cleansing, like a cold shower. It’s
more difficult to bullshit when trying to be honest and precise in public.
3. Call
it conservation. A blog post is a record of what’s going through one person’s
mind on a given day. If the thought is already developing, why not fix it (in
the photographic sense)?
4. Giving
ensures receiving. Gifts are reciprocal. A reader I had never
heard from before recently wrote to say he had never heard of Stevie Smith
before reading one of my posts. He bought a collection of her poems and loved
it. He reciprocated with a note of thanks.
Eight
years ago today, on Feb. 5, 2006, Anecdotal Evidence emerged, shaky and
uncertain, from its shell. On that first day, when even “work-in-progress”
sounded over-confident, I announced its arrival with an excerpt from Hazlitt’s 1822
essay “The Fight”:
“…we
agreed to adjourn to my lodgings to discuss measures with that cordiality which
makes old friends like new, and new friends like old, on great occasions. We
are cold to others only when we are dull in ourselves, and have neither
thoughts nor feelings to impart to them. Give a man a topic in his head, a
throb of pleasure in his heart, and he will be glad to share it with the first
person he meets.”
Welcome to my lodgings. Pardon
the occasional dullness. Pull up closer to the fire. What
would you like to talk about?
8 comments:
Are blogs a place for new art or are they too discursive, too fleeting to be a repository for the enduring? Or can they be whatever you want them to be? Just curious.
Congratulations on the anniversary, Mr Kurp. Anecdotal Evidence has been my morning reading almost every day for the last five or six years now. Thank you for the conversation.
Congratulations and thanks. You have been my first stop every morning since I discovered you on September 17, 2008 here.
Congratulations Patrick - here's to the next eight years...
A relative newcomer, I have only been visiting for six months or so, but am so pleased to have found your site. Like others, I find it a regular source of pleasure and interest. Thank you.
Has it been that long? I think I've been with you pretty much from the first. Seem to recall a link fromTerry Teachout? Many thanks and congratualtions!
MM
Congratulations, Patrick, and more important: Thank you.
Happy Anniversary. If there's an essential blog for me, this is it. I also seek to be inspired by your example as I revive my own blog, in which many of the same names encountered in your posts (Beckett, Nabokov, Amis, et al.) will no doubt pop up.
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