Mumblings to the Rumblings
Offset -a printing process in which an inked impression from a plate is first made on a rubber-blanketed cylinder and then transferred to the paper being printed
(Merriam-Webster).
One Iranian photographer (Bhaman Jalali) uses offset to create a world that brings the tangible and the virtual together. #anibas commented on my [Tuesday post] with the following observation: “
“while I may choose real life as my realm, some people choose the virtual as theirs.
For those who choose the virtual realm, all of this IS infinitely more important, be it financially, or socially, or in any way! . . . In that sense, who am I to tell others what should matter, to them?”
My collage of two silver bromide prints from the series Image of Imagination by Jalali. The original photograph is a mix of a sign for a photostudio, in Isfahan, with red graffiti in reaction to some pictures taken there of unveiled women; and the portrait of a veiled woman.
Notwithstanding appreciating and/or sympathising with her points of view, I can still hear Dostoevsky ringing in my ears that we ought to nurture a greater sense of responsibility for our fellow man - although this too makes for a high wire tricky to balance upon elegantly (without falling into modes of interfering or imposing). Leaving everybody free to do their own “ thing” is all good and well, but there will be “a day of reckoning”: i.e. an end of the me-me-me line. But probably not here, not now, no time soon. So all is good (read #soyrosa's comment to the same post and rest even more assured: as long as the balance is kept between good and bad all tends to be for the best).
Nobody promised a New Brave New World here
One can only try to lead to water, but never force any horse to drink. When a horse doesn’t drink it’s simple: he isn’t thirsty or he’s sick as a dog. There maybe is something you can do for the equus still. Call a vet. Whisper sweet little things in its senstive ear. But if they've eaten ragwort then that's that.
After a bellicose Monday, I address some points that have kept me milling.
Reactionary
Back to Bhaman Jalali and his series : “Image of Imagination” (2003-5); may his virtual reality inspire ours on Steemit. He mixes present and past, reactions to reactions.
I have decided I am astoundingly reactionary to all I see or hear. Even brushing aside is to comment. To breathe is to react. Automated ventilation even requires a reaction to the influx of oxygen. To not react is the definition of death.
Originality
For those who are in it to make money blogging, originality will have to be key: the USP. (Unless, of course, you have the standard package deal that always sells.) It may not sound very community-minded, but who are we kidding? You have to patent yourself in this money world.
If you are here to make buddies for life, it will be different, but you will still be worker ants to the business model and not building a new type of community. Just doing more of the same in a different place. This translocation, however, is sneakier than it may look. It is very hard to make people see that. It's a bit like how children don't understand why it's not okay to smoke dope and have sex at 14. Or why scientists can't find the gene to our musicality. There are principles at work hard to fully grasp when you prefer to deal in abstractions or conventions. Clearly, I've come here with a very long term vision that pierces right through the platform, to say anything more about it would be to spoil people's fun.
What would be a New way forward for people to connect, express, share and care?
A different kind of engine is required. Currently the very idea of self-regulation lies behind the stimulation of growth. The larger Steemit becomes the more different departments we will get, until we are back to where we started: dividided up into our own little comfort zones and specialisations, selling our wares, showing off, accumulating bits of information. A small Steemit however, can only mean those who get the formula right will be the market leaders, and the rest will slink back out of the hub (which is the coin).
There is no win-win when it comes to progress. Just that fun dogs have in chasing their tails. And the few who strike lucky, for whom we are all very happy. And besides, like dear onnnovocks keeps reminding me, isn't being here better than watching tv? (As inventions go, I happen to be very pro-tv as compared to internet, only cannot say there is much worth staying up late for on it....) I suppose if Steemit makes you feel alive and kicking then it is a valid road to Rome.
We are not running a university board, or an Apprentice-type competition. Yet, there are subtle buffers and rudders in place steering the investors and their favorite fast-turnover makers. Coming on to this platform is like having a second subscription to a paper. Or a tabloid rather.... Has anybody experienced already that there is bad press to being on Steemit ? Would it compromise your CV? (Facebook most certainly can.) Again, this is not to dishearten anybody out there having fun. This is just me mumbling to myself. If you are sunny and successfully baking scones, hopping from island to island with your nifty fifty, surfing the seas, flying through the gorges into dazzling sunsets it can do no harm to share it with the rest of us. But there is so much bad art, music and writing here that it makes for a hellish ordeal to hack your way through this jungle of ego, day after day - if you take it seriously as a joint venture or innovative project (like the copywriter of a newspaper might).
To offset is, also, to foil one existence to embelish another.
The coevolution of genes and culture fixes faculties. What starts off as a survival tool, say a mating song (sexual adaptation) or a sequence of sounds in service to mother-child bonding (calls of recognition), may develop into something it never was intended to be: and the pleasure of music is born. Once expanded through rituals (larger bonding) and memory aids (Aboriginal "map-songs" which pass down hunting tracks) music demonstrates how we are able to by-pass biological adaptation by means of cultural exaptation.
An incidental "survival mechanism" may become one of the most exclusively humanising features. But we have to pick wisely. The autism pattern is not one I'd recommend keeping in the mix. But let's not lose the lactase producing programme to allergies. (11.000 years ago we underwent a lasting genetic change when we developed lactase that enables us to digest cow's milk. If you regress on this advancement you will become intolerant or allergic to milk.) There is a feed-back loop between behaviour and genes. What is the feed-back loop developing here? Why am I worried it can't be in aid of a more loving world, although it seems like it's pulling us together from all over the place to spend non-committal time together without judgement, in peace and with many pleasantries?
What conventional science fails to see is that music precedes the grunting and calling, not only for man, but in plants it guides the metamorphosis, and in nature in general all watery and chemical processes. Our musicality is a higher sense which perceives this underlying music. Can any virtual reality platform echo this through the simulation of the etheric-cosmic dance? What kind of writing or art or vlog does it take to do so successfully? There is a(n unwritten) formula, I think. One you can sense. And thus a quality control is possible, were it that we were after creating a world where love rules (not money).
Offset is also a rapper.
Why was I expecting something different?
I wasn't . It's turned out like I knew it would. But I entered forgetting what I know. I always do, or I'd sit on my mat and never budge.
It is becoming harder to expect anything different anymore. I have become precious with my time. My ears and eyes and hips are failing me. I can only stay here briefly, it's like preparing for death. I get frustrated by an ever growing urgency to make the most of the time left to me. You only get one go at making a memory. It's a bit like watching Saw: once you've seen it you can't get it back out of your head. I knitted a scarf to a couple of the parts I binge watched to catch up with my son, who lamentably is obsessed with horror films - it is most peculiar and distressing to me, but fits the rest of his coping strategy with life, and it doesn't seem to marr his happy-go-lucky-attitude to life. I can't wear it, now: the gruesomeness is somehow knitted in with it. What kind of memory am I making here?
When the time is right it will all come to be. That place that dares to break down (gently) the old and daringly sees how far we can stretch the new (before incorporating our old favorites) - instead of building up on what we already have achieved, just to help us move on from what we already know cannot work. Am I silly to think it can be done? Maybe. Premature, to be sure.
External offset
I know we are supposed to promote eachother, but my life also is filled by non-Steemit reading, and since we are supposed to share who we are here, and what we do or see or hear or know, I leave you with my latest joyous find in Atlas Obscura. Enriching myself there (spending yesterday on islands which lead to lighthouses, specifically in New England, and eventually to the amazing photo collection of lighthouses of Jeremy d’Entremont I realised that if any of us had what it took to be successful we wouldn't be here.
I expect great things for some of you, yet!! You know who you are...
Mahmud Kalari is lured to photography by the camera’s ability to record people’s lonely moments. He says:
“I believe that all of photography’s wonder is condensed in this process: the transromation of reality in front of the camera into a virtual double of that reality as recorded by the photographer.”
