In today's image-obsessed culture I often find myself scrambling to find simplicity — simplicity in my work, in my surroundings, in my mind, in my heart. And nothing brings me closer to that sacred space than getting back to the written word.
Long before there was Instagram and Snapchat, Facebook and Twitter, Youtube, Vine, Pinterest, Tumblr, Periscope, musical.ly...long before the advent of online mass media consumption, multimedia marketing and the growing, thunderous voice screaming that the future is visual and that attention spans are a rare commodity and that God forbid consuming content actually requires a certain degree of effort — long before all that there was simple, pure, sweet text on a screen, ink on paper. A blunt pencil scraping softly against a beat up notebook. Back when there was value in text alone, without the unnecessary pressure of an accompanying "compelling image." Back when the consumer wasn't a mindless internet troll jumping from one Facebook video to the next, dwindling away their 21st century attention span without regard to content quality or the value of time. Back when readers weren't spoon-fed surface-level, mind-numbing content, but were actually held to a standard of comprehension and engagement with written content that didn't require a shiny object being dangled before their eyes...
I digress. To the modern creative - especially writers/anyone who wants to write anything meaningful online - the need for visual, stimulating content that is constant, fast and interactive can be paralyzing, turning what instinctively would be a simple reflective essay into a gargantuan task that suddenly requires photos, video or graphic design skills if they're going to get any eyeballs. This means either spending hours doing a terrible job with a visual, or finding someone else to do it, or finding the path of least resistance a.k.a. "What? Write? Me?" a.k.a. Buzzfeed. Now it's about page clicks and unique views and how long did they stay on my site and what celebrities and key words are trending so I can drive traffic to my article and oh, what was I going to write about again? ...Yeah.
What happened to writing for writing's sake? Writing for the sake of story telling? Story telling for the sake of opening up our imagination? Not seeing, precisely so that we can learn to see in a whole new way? Can we just write because we want to write and say something, and communicate ideas and feelings to people desiring to read them?
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Don't get me wrong. I love pictures, videos, and all the fun stuff (minute 1:04) you can find online these days. To ignore that would be to "opt-out" of modern society (oh but don't we want to sometimes...!) — yet personally I need a space where I can get back to just the words. Where I can write without worrying about what picture to tag along with my thoughts. Where I can express myself without needing to impress anyone. Where how I look or what I wear or what I'm doing that day is completely irrelevant because what matters is what I have to say. A place where I don't have to constantly market my own life (because isn't that what we're doing?) to feel relevant, accepted and accomplished (crazy) because I can express myself for the sake of expressing myself for Godsssssssssake.
I start to get excited here, but who doesn't want a space amidst the digital chaos where they can just be? (Pretty hard to find these days/is that even a thing..?) Who doesn't secretly wish for a teeny tiny corner of the Internet cosmos where outward appearance doesn't influence, or have anything, really, to do with what is essentially most important: Self-expression. Or better said, soul-expression. (Cheesy ok yes, I know. Just yes. Sorry.) But it's true. And very necessary for maintaining our sanity as human beings! Or maybe it's just me that loves the idea of l e t t i n g g o a little bit. Who knows.
That being said, for all the fun, visual, easy, fluffy, sexy stuff, find me elsewhere on the web.
But for the realest stuff, find me here.
My words, my story, no filters, #nofrills. Expect...a bit of everything, from musings on my music career, to social commentary, to random spurts of poetry, to the occasional pictures, to questions I have about life, to inspiration from people like YOU.
My teeny tiny corner of simple goodness is yours, so comment and let me know you're there.
xx
B
