Long-Form Blogging & Fanzines & stuff.......

You're not reading this because nobody reads blogs any more.....

.........I'm not even reading it.................

                                                               .............................except in my head, where I'm writing it........
....'it' being the perfect response to the notion that nobody reads what I believe are called 'long-form' blog posts, although I hadn't heard that expression until a few weeks back...........I'd been naively writing 'long' ('s'all relative, ennit?) pieces now and again without realising the were actually extinct in The Modern World.........and as the old-fashioned notion goes, anything longer than 140 characters is......so.......pfft..................eh? We don't have time! .....................

.....fact (?) is that to write anything of length (141 characters?) you should have something to say......you know? But what if the writer does have something to say although it's not exactly.........er...........enlightening, wise, original, perceptive etc? What authority does the writer have? Is she qualified to discuss the subject?

....................I remember thinking (it was a long time ago, before my brain got fried by the internet) that blogs were/could be/should be a continuation of the fanzine idea.........great! I used to make a fanzine........

.............so I could blog. Right? Yes! Trouble is I seem to have missed out on the classic era (someone also told me recently that such a thing existed) when long-form bloggers exchanged ideas, reacted to each other's long posts etc. Damn! I missed the boat. Well, nothing new there. The only boat I've ever caught really was the musical one...........and only then a specific musical one...........now and again...........such as the time I played my friends the debut single from an 'unknown' (to them) outfit called Portishead..............yes, it was so specific that I remember it...............enough of my desperate attempt to claim credibility..............although, I feel compelled, whilst we're in Bristol, to mention the fact that Tricky once called me up on a Saturday afternoon to say how happy he was to be on the cover of my fanzine................how surprised I was at his West Country accent...............and he's still retained it, as witnessed when he popped up as a talking head on a TV documentary the other night.........

.................so I've been looking at Teal Triggs' book, Fanzines, recently, which has been sat on the shelf for ages........and wondering, again, why my masterpiece (ahem) isn't in there - huh! Then the other day I watched her giving a lecture on fanzines and having to explain what a fanzine was............surprised that anyone may not know.......and reminding myself that others (yes, them) exist in a world where fanzines simply don't exist, despite having been around since the early sci-fi days (30s)........................

..............because for them I presume, the notion of DIY culture doesn't exist either. They live in a world where everything is made by other people and the idea of doing it themselves doesn't enter their heads.............whereas.............me, I got the crazy notion, around the time of Punke Rocke, that I could be a creator as well as a consumer (we all got carried away with that idea)............

.......it's still a good idea, isn't it? Make music, Art, books.........why not? Make it for the hell of it....make it to prove that you can..................to deny, for once, the authority of others, of everyone over you...make a tiny rebellion in your head then put it in print, on screen etc..............................it may not overthrow the ruling elite but...........

.....................so now there is probably someone somewhere lecturing on long-form blogs.......it's cultural history!......complete with slide show examples of all those words................but like books (specifically, collecting old ones).....and vinyl (revived again?).........a dedicated few will still desire that old-fashioned stuff.........

...meanwhile.......................TTFN..............