iwantlow

What fun! I have been reading low’s blog since his first request for allies in the fight to procure the plurk user name “low”, I was not so comfortable with this whole blogging and plurk thing back then. I didn’t write to this original low (imposter), but now I wish I had.

From the beginning there is no uncertainty in the presentation Cody Stahl. There is a fearless, confidant, and yet humble person here. I may wish that I had appealed to the low imposter, but then again, how would iwantlow have been different? He needed nothing, he wanted the tidy image, but as will be discussed, this became rather unimportant. Low’s identity was pieced together with each blog, plurk, and reference. So, I will try now to critique this work, evaluate his craft, observe changes, and how it compares to my own…

It was the starting point to offer a cookie for the appropriate name, and followed with an offering of writing, Low’s travel prose. It is rich, it is enough to sustain with just a small sample. It is the same stretch of coast I traveled as a young dreamer, the feeling of loneliness that does not entertain sympathy or even acknowledgment. It is real, and tangible. As if to finish my thought low writes,

“Reading Burroughs' Last Words was a bit depressing. At the time of writing Burroughs is in retirement from serious writing, and writes a journal in order to sate a decades-long habit of writing his dreams and ideas down. He writes his dreams down diligently, is very upset at a cat's death and is very fond of his cats, and writes often about the evils of the drug war. I felt my own sense of mortality creep up on me on reading these passages.”

It is the power of writing that can bring us outside of our selves and enter us into suffering, joy, disillusionment, and anxiousness.

There is a sense of voyeurism at times. We can lay out our thoughts and emotions and there is no real control of who will read it, what will influence their interpretation, and what they will leave with. I have displayed private revelations, and things that people may not want to read, but putting it out there feels good. It is not quite getting it off my chest, but allowing my thoughts to reach a conclusion outside of me.

I catch a rare glimpse at his frailty, his unsent letter shows how human he is. It is so revealing because we have been there. I have written letters that should not, could not be delivered. It is so telling because I can see myself. The excerpts from his book carry this same revealing narrative that allows us to see through his eyes. Commenting on his journaling class, he paints it vividly here, “This book reminded me that a story is still one of the best ways to share an experience and moment. Video, sound recording, and photography can only do so much. It is through language that we connect to the world around us through communication.”

On the discussion and material in class (From the Vault) regarding germs, Low draws -from who knows where- a connection to another author. Cendrars’ Moravagine, who wrote of diseases, “They are one of the many manifestations of universal matter. They may be the principal manifestation of that matter which we will never be able to study except through the phenomena of relationships and analogies.”

Beautiful. The discussion of disease went full circle in class and beyond. When everything comes into the infinity, the all-one, it does not matter where it began.

There is just so much animation in this blog. Looking at comments, seeing the other bloggers who have left their mark on his work, the people, sounds, places that have influenced his writing. It makes me anxious, it makes me burn, I want to dance and run and be out in the blowing wind. What is art? if not spirits ablaze…

...

At first I didn’t know how to interpret the blog entries composed of excerpts by other writers. As I read them in the context of the whole blog I stumble on the full view. It is again to see low, to see his digestion of so many thoughts, and to see how, and when, and where they are regurgitated. Without a word of his own, I see low. Compared to how I drew in specific texts, I think this is written more for an audience. We are not forced into an interpretation. We must find it in the context of the blog, but the rest is up to the reader. I think this is what I struggled with at first. Low does not expect me to misappropriate the message, but I am free to do so. His process is internal. Assessing my own blog I see that my analysis is exposed, contradictions, realizations, frustrations, and all.

Yet, in the culminating posts, and the approaching end of the quarter, there is a somewhat emotional, confrontational attitude evident in his blog. As if to catch me off guard he even wrote a response to my post offering how he interprets this final.
“We, too, are but an image, a scrap of clothing, a handwritten note eventually to be among the articles of the dead to one day disappear completely from the minds of men.”

and

“I'm done with trying to come up with blanket definitions of humanity. I'm more interested in the individual and their ideological and philosophical liberation. There is so much out there that wants to define your life to suit the limited purposes of a given agenda: including this class, including plurk, including your own limited ego perspective. Who to trust? Perhaps that, outside you, that gives your life meaning + significance.”

I do not wish to muddy this point because it was there all along and here in simple truth. It was a pleasure dancing with you, low.