2005-07-14 - 1:08 a.m.
I’ve really been questioning the value of keeping an online diary lately. In all this frenzy about blogging, the idea that I as an individual have something witty and “so original and fresh” to say seems really tired and over played. These days I am more interested in well-researched articles that have been fact checked and gone over by many pairs of critical eyes than gossip parading as news or opinion. The focus of my writing has been me, my personal trial, tribulations, revelations and adventures for so long, spurred on by a mix of self confidence, self consciousness and privilege and being in a small, liberal arts undergraduate college. Now I feel like I am about as boring a subject as they come, not that I am not going through some intense emotions, but why does the world need to know about it? What insight can someone possibly gain and why do I think that they could gain that from me? All of this coming in the frenzy of memoirs being published by young authors. Bleh.
Though I am stuck for words after last weeks bombings in London (a mix of frustration, knowing this is just what Bush and Blair need to keep the “war on terror” going, anger and pain over the lives that were lost and of course, thinking about how the media covers and people in the US relate to deaths in London versus deaths in Iraq) I feel like navel gazing and smug self satisfied writing sprinkled with political commentary is going to get us no where. Perhaps I am back to wanting answers and direction, something my life certainly lacks post graduation (cliché, you’ve heard it before, I’m not going to subject you to it). I am always looking for those ways to apply my politics, the ways I find in my day-to-day life never quite feeling adequate enough.
One of the women I work for, who has been a great mentor for me already, took me to lunch last week in the wake of the London bombings, the office was quiet and I was too depressed and scattered to do anything anyways. We discussed making a life in the field of art, politics and culture work for us and I told her that I feel constantly surprised I continuously gravitate towards working in and organizing with art and culture as opposed to more straight up grassroots community organizing. Referring to the recent G8 protests in Scotland and the police repression there she asked me if I expected myself to be “dancing among the smoke bombs” and I said, “Yeah, I did, and then I realized that there are many different approaches to creating change.” But I don’t want my choices to use “culture as a weapon,” to quote the woman of color run media organization Third World Majority, to be an excuse for complicity.
In more positive news, the queer, feminist art web-magazine two of my friends and I have been working on for the last 2 years launched last week. To look at this latest attempt to use culture as a weapon, please visit www.riffrag.org. We’ve got big plans for it, so come back often…
