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April 21, 2003

The Art of Introspection

I am a good subject, and I am extraordinarily good about writing about myself. It began when I started going broke in college. I suddenly realized that I wasn't ever going to go to Harvard, there was no noble arena awaiting my participation and I would never have enough cash to play all the practical jokes that burbled to the surface of my overactive imagination. So I made newspaper collage bookcovers out of the pages of Graphis magazine that I stole from Oviatt and imagined that in my meditations I was the center of the universe.

It wasn't very difficult a transition. I had been a young black man for quite some time, which means that I spent an inordinate amount of time second-guessing how the functional and mainstream world was second-guessing me. In fact, like most young black men, I was very good at that skill and I mastered it to the point at which I could easily control what other people would think of me by reading their minds and anticipating their next underestimation. It's an excellent skill for keeping people off balance, but not very useful for filling out resumes. Since I was a bit more interested in positive cash flow than positively reflected self-regard, I decided at some point to jump out of that ring of fire. Of course I retained the talent and I am using it these days as I re-enter the world of deep geekery. I spent Saturday afternoon reading Mastering Regular Expressions as I waited in ride lines at Legoland. See?

Somewhere along the line, writing about myself became a liberating experience, but actually the subject of this angle of me is not so much focused on my own liberation but that of a certain flight risk. A woman who goes by the name of Isabella is about to become something of a celebrity for introspective reasons. So this has me intrigued as a writer. I have been compulsively writing about things other than myself and biannual reblackification and am anticipating some success at that. I have also been intrigued by the circuitous feedback loops of the blogosphere and am caught up in its ways and means of popularity. Finally, I am energized by the pure geek factor of coding and concentration. So reading Isabella has the shock of self-recognition in a mode of expression I have been avoiding, until these very paragraphs.

I have been blogging for a short five months. I rolled my own set of links to essays then moved to Radio and have now settled to Movable Type. I'll have a Slash page before long, knowing me. I'll change and the technology will change and I will feel uncomfortable about not sticking to one theme in Cobb. I need a sense of mission, the gestalt of this has to add up to something. I got started wanting to represent the Old School. That is a cultural and political task but it's also existential. Yet I think my existentials are somewhat extreme and unrepresentative. Ha. Don't we all? Therefore I've spawned a couple of other sites which handle fractions of the task, one being OldSchoolRepublicans.net which is suffering a bit from my divided attention. The other site is doing fine because it's not all about me. My birds are nesting there. This shock of recognition has reminded me that I have been avoiding The Voice and I shouldn't be ashamed to use it. This must be the place. There are enough html links and comments and trackbacks to push and pull a reader to appropriate spots in my multitasked and comparmentalized worlds, so I'll try not to worry about the missions.

I have taken some pride in having leashed the fearless man my father raised as an acknowledgement of that success. Perhaps I should chase a bit more and remain true to the spirit by looking a little bit closer and transducing a world and its effects on me via Cobb. Such a mission, O God hear I go, will revive The Voice and give me the satisfaction of knowing I am still alive in a way I always have been. It may also give readers the kind of satisfaction I am getting from overhearing the thoughts of an odd duck on the run who knows herself pretty well.

Thanks Isabella, I needed that.

Posted by mbowen at April 21, 2003 10:57 PM

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Posted by: Nancy at April 22, 2003 12:54 PM