Last week a friend sent me this link to a video of the late night breakdown by one of the pioneers of blogging Justin Hall. I had never heard of him, and still no little about his story. The clip has haunted me for a few days, as I have watched it several times, but it wasn’t until tonight that I heard my remix. Throughout this week, I have also been obsessed with the latest single form the new Iron and Wine album Kiss Each Other Clean. I had mentioned before that the song makes me feel like flying. I strummed it on the guitar today and felt very empowered, but back to tonight- I was listening to one and thinking about the other, cant remember which was which, when I realized that they mirror each other well. There is a sense of hope and desperation in both pieces of art, and I wanted to capture that juxtaposition. I felt a sudden sense of urgency to get this project done. I hope to re-do in a few days, with perhaps me singing the song instead of the recorded track, but will see how that turns out, or if I run out of energy.
It is this dialectical relationship and tension between hope and desperation I find so fascinating. This relationship is seen in everything we do: art, work, the web itself…
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Wow. This song kills me – as with many I&W songs, it nails that bittersweet, searching sound – and it provides a great dialogue partner, in some ways a balm, an affirmation, for this person wandering around in what seems like a very dark place, a place of serious soul-searching. Well matched. You should totally record a cover of it.
Now to nerd out about music…I have enjoyed listening to the evolution of Iron and Wine. The first record was and is very important to me, and though I love those hushed moments, it’s been exciting to hear the artist follow his muse, defying any pressure (internal or external) to simply keep putting out same-sounding, hushed, spare recordings. To my ears, the subsequent work is as intimate and powerful, albeit in different ways. I don’t think there’s another artist that occupies so many slots on my “I want this playing when my ashes are scattered” list.
I am so glad you “got” the “that bittersweet, searching sound” – and how it is a “a balm, an affirmation.” That is exactly what I was thinking when I was mixing it. I will definitely be covering this song soon, and will most likely add Justin’s confession as I really relate to much of what he says. Maybe even turn his words into a sung verse.
As for I&W, he is a bad-ass straight up! I love everything he has done. I was a bit nervous when I hear reviews, but upon listening it is like a sonic playground and I love sometimes just hanging on the monkey bars, while at other times I am jumping off the swings.
Appreciate that you picked up the “ashes” tweet. It is these subtleties that make our web connections so much more meaningful.
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I wonder if some of the heaviest users of the net, and especially of social media, are also the loneliest.
I sometimes wonder why every single time I pop onto twitter the same people are on regardless of what time or day. I especially wonder about the folks with family. Why are they on the computer all the time? What need is the social networking filling that their family can’t…doesn’t…won’t?
I think in the video Justin said something like the internet fills us with shreds…
Those shreds never seem to quite fill us do they, they leave space in which keeps us constantly on the prowl to get more shreds to fill the empty places. This is true…Hersey has engineered M&Ms to not satisfy, they are formulated so that the taste is just on the edge of being perfectly sweet. The result is that your hand can endlessly dip into a bowl as you seek to satisfy your brain, the problem is that you can’t no matter how many you eat.
Does that happen to folks on the intenet? Have the shreds we find and fill ourselves with propel our search? Or did our search lead us to the shreds? Combination?
Risky line coming up…I wonder about some of the edu-internet stars…how do they do it? Always at a conference, always posting, always twittering, always publishing, always speaking, always doing. The result? We put them on a pedestal. We award them. We retweet and quote them, we digest their shreds in order to somehow satisfy our needs. I wonder what our needs are? Their needs? My needs? Why do I write this comment instead of making my kids lunch?
Hold on…”Five more minutes kids…I’m…ummm…working.”
So is it hope…or desperation…maybe both.
I do wonder if the social side of the web will make us forget that the reason why we have two hands, one for helping others, and one for helping ourselves. Has the net made it so easy to reach out, so easy to find help, so easy to take the hand extended by another that we have forgotten that we have a hand to help ourselves? Have we become not more collaborative, but more dependent?
If you were not able to post your remix…would you still have done it? When you first started making it, what fed your need to do it? Did it feed that need? Or was it another shred…that will lead you to seek out another, and another.
I don’t know Jabiz…
I just wonder sometimes what would happen if everyone just quit sharing for a month. Just stopped tweeting, and blogging and speaking. If everyone just went quiet. What creativity would arise from those solitary thoughts? What would happen if we weren’t so afraid of being ourselves, with ourselves, and only with those around us in our community. How would our thoughts be re-focused?
I’m turning off the computer for the day.
“In order to be open to creativity, one must have the capacity for contructive use of solitude. One must overcome the fear of being alone.” ~Rollo May
Hard for me to argue with your analysis Paul. I am finding people online that get me. I am an outsider in my school, I think most of us are outsiders because we don’t see teaching as a job or technology as just a tool. We have made connections online that became very powerful because we accept each other, even understand each other. Unfortunately you identified the problem with these connections, they are not satisfying. They do leave empty places.
I felt this very acutely after EdCampKC. I had met several people that I have bonded with online and when I went home I really felt pretty empty. I don’t think the answer is to stop the communication though.
I am trying to explore ways that can lead to closer connections. I believe that (or at least hope that) by spending more time together face to face the connections will transcend the limitations inherent in social media. I of course could be completely wrong, but I have to try.
The internet is about connections, the connections can be the beginning of something bigger not just an end in itself.
Paul,
Let me start by thanking you for once again engaging me so deeply on a blog post; if nothing else comes from this or our other conversations we will know that for a few minutes we were both hard at work trying to…..well I am not sure what it is we are trying to do, but we obviously were taking it seriously and felt it was important.
I have been chewing on your comment since I first read it last night, and I am no closer to a coherent response, but let’s let this bad boy loose and see what sticks.
I guess on any given day I fluctuate between being in awe of the power and beauty of this beautiful connected web, or in absolute horror of what it is doing to me. Like a tightly wound metronome I swing back and forth like clock work. Last night I was riding a high, which I will blog about soon. I only mention this because this response may be tinted a bit rosy.
I think this understanding that the new web or whatever we want to call is both hope and desperation is important. While it can be confusing, we must learn to balance and deal with this combined effect. The point of the mash up was just that- there can be beauty in the desperation, just as there can be horror in the hope.
What you are feeling, someone else feels. Maybe what you are feeling, someone else feels…woah. That’s what I wanted online. I wanted to share that feeling that of someone else feeling what I feel. That’s what I wanted online.
I will start there. A few days ago, I tweeted out that art doesn’t fill a hole in my life it fills every hole in my life. I am damaged goods, Paul, let me be the first to confess that here and now. I have my scars, I have my memories, and I have my healing. My entire life art has been my attempt to connect to something larger than myself. I am sure Will may say that this emptiness I feel is my lack of god and I can understand that, but I have always believed in human beings and our capacity to tend to each other and love each other. I believe in our ability to feel what some one else feels. I have always understood art to be the epitome of empathy. It is how we connect. It is how we understand each other. I say all of this because art is beyond the Internet. Art is beyond social media. Art is beyond web 2.0. Art is the ultimate human connection and it is timeless. You asked me, “If you were not able to post your remix…would you still have done it? When you first started making it, what fed your need to do it? Did it feed that need? Or was it another shred…that will lead you to seek out another, and another.”
I had no choice. I heard the mix every time I listened to the song. I heard Justin as I listened to the song. So yes, I would have created to satiate my own need, but with the connection, without the sharing I would have felt empty. I guess what the web has done, at least for me is that it has suddenly made my mind, my soul, my art open and immediately accessible to a group of strangers. It has made it easier for me to share my shreds.
I think part of it is that art connects me with others to help me heal and repair my damaged self and the internet makes that sharing and connection much easier. A counselor may say that because I suffered as a child, I am constantly looking for validation from whoever I can get it from. Sure maybe, but I had two of the most loving and supportive parents, so why the need for this constant need for the web to make me not feel so alone? The answer to that question is what I am searching for. Am I alone in this? Do others not need to be told they matter? Don’t others need to be told they move and inspire? Is this a weakness? Should I be ashamed of wanting to be heard and validated? Should I hide my work? Am I vain because I feel good when people take the time to engage with my work, with me, with this emptiness? Some pray to a higher power for love and acceptance, I just ask you internet, you humanity to feel what I feel and tell me how you feel to see if we can move forward.
I am rambling so let’s move on to some of your points:
I especially wonder about the folks with family. Why are they on the computer all the time? What need is the social networking filling that their family can’t…doesn’t…won’t?
I have been asking myself that question all day long. I have an amazing family. I have two of the most beautiful girls in the whole world who fill my every day with indescribable joy. I would hope that I spend quality time with them and offer as much of myself with them as they can handle. Having said that, yes, I too am guilty of the occasional, “wait one second sweetie let me just finishing uploading this photo, or hold on sweetie this blog post is almost published,” but I do not go to social networks because there is a gap in my family, so what is it? Why do I write something like this comment and check to see who has responded?
Not to be repetitive, but this need to connect dates back before social media. I have been scribbling my thoughts into journals and passing them around to people for as long as I can remember. I just find it hard to believe that every one isn’t like me. How do people stay sane? How do people not constantly feel the need to stuff themselves with the shreds of others?
You said, “Does that happen to folks on the intenet? Have the shreds we find and fill ourselves with propel our search? Or did our search lead us to the shreds? Combinations?”
Isn’t there an emptiness and a longing at the core of every human being that can only be filled by sharing and blending and connecting it to the suffering of all existence? Isn’t that why we write poetry, paint the walls of caves, make our guitars electric? This emptiness is not depressing or sad, on the contrary it is why we live. Some fill it with religion, but I choose to fill it with you. And you and you and me and us.
Social media is not a way for me to make friends and share ed-tech tips, it is attempt to fill this cherished emptiness, empty it out, and fill it again. It is not a void left by a deficit in family or friends, but simply a gap that was put there to fill with the suffering and joy of us all. The space designed for and by art.
You mentioned,
“I think in the video Justin said something like the internet fills us with shreds…
Those shreds never seem to quite fill us do they, they leave space in which keeps us constantly on the prowl to get more shreds to fill the empty places.”
The Internet does not fill us with shreds, existence does. And it is okay that we are never filled. It is okay that we fill and expel ourselves constantly.
The beauty of the Internet for me, is that it is helping me find people who are sharing shreds I find useful and more selfishly they are inspired by the shreds I share. Social media is helping me gather my tribe. I like what Will says in the next post, “Now what?” Once we have fond a small tribe of strangers, what do we do next? How do we take it to the next level?
Have we become not more collaborative, but more dependent?
Is there something wrong with dependence? Is that not the cornerstone of love, of community? I do not mean a weak ineffectual dependence, but a powerful vibrant inter-dependence. Take a look at nature- dependence is vital.
“I just wonder sometimes what would happen if everyone just quit sharing for a month. Just stopped tweeting, and blogging and speaking. If everyone just went quiet. What creativity would arise from those solitary thoughts?”
I love this idea. I want to do it. Not sure when. I am currently riding a wave of creativity and I will ride it till I crash on the shore. Maybe then I will check out for a while.
You mentioned, “I wonder about some of the edu-internet stars…how do they do it? Always at a conference, always posting, always twittering, always publishing, always speaking, always doing. The result? We put them on a pedestal. We award them. We retweet and quote them, we digest their shreds in order to somehow satisfy our needs. I wonder what our needs are? Their needs? My needs? Why do I write this comment instead of making my kids lunch?
Tear down the pedestals, revoke the awards, make your kid lunch. If the web is just a place to share ed-tech tools than we are all doomed. Let us not concern ourselves with the frivolity of Edi-tech stardom. We have bigger fish to fry. If you need to take a break do so. We will be here when you return and maybe someday we will gather around a fire getting closer to understanding our collective needs. Until then, grab that guitar and make some art. Throw me a shred to let me know I am not alone and I will do the same for you.
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My initial thoughts on this are how context shapes our relationships/interactions/sharing. On the net, we can throw something out there, and if it resonates with someone, he or she can respond, maybe after taking some time to reflect on it first. Face to face, you have to make the connections with the person right in front of you. You have to figure out what might resonate with that person, rather than broadcasting an idea and waiting to see who it resonates with. You have to decide what and how much to tell that one specific person–how much to reveal, what level of intimacy to have, whether or not now is the time to say what you have to say, how you think that person might respond.
Thinking about it that way, it’s no wonder we’re all so lonely. Those interactions are really hard. It’s hard to get to the core of what you want to say when there are so many other variables to manage in face-to-face interactions.
Your post makes me think of this article I just read: http://users.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/disinhibit.html. I know someone posted it on Twitter, but because I read it on Instapaper, I don’t remember who I am essentially retweeting (the one downside of Instapaper/Read it Later).
Thanks for this post & remix. I know I’ll be thinking about it for a while.
Cathy you mentioned the difficulty of dealing with people face to face, and I think it is in that difficulty that we find intimacy and it is this difficulty and intimacy where some claim authenticity of relationships. Here is a question, how can we move away from broadcasting online and creating intimacy? Maybe if we can do that, we can create deeper more authentic relationships online. They will be difficult, but may be more rewarding.
I have seen that article posed by Melanie McBride and have tried to skim through it several times, but it is too clinical for me to understand. Sure we can categories each other in psychology, but I would rather free each other through poetry.
Oh, and I should also say that I’ve been listening to Kiss Each Other Clean for the past couple of days now. It is not yet embedded as deeply into my soul as Shepherd’s Dog, but I think it may get there. 🙂
“We are outsiders.” Being an outsider makes us unhappy. We search the internet for those that get us. Is that it? Finding others like us will make us happy? But when we find others that get us, that understand us, when we find others like us…what do we then bond over? The same issues that started our search in the first place. We bond over our searches, our quests, our outsiderness. It turns the relationship into somewhat of a perpetual quest.
Maybe we don’t need new ways to connect, but new things to connect over.
Maybe what leads to closer connections is connecting over something other than the search.
All the above are thoughts that I started in response to what everyone has left in the comments…I was going to delete them before shifting gears, but I figure why not keep them. I actually printed out all the comments on this post—never thought it would be so many pages! Read through, circled things, underlined words, and put stars next certain paragraphs. The problem I have is that I agree with everything written, yet still feel as though something is missing.
The reality is that my blog, my posts …do they reflect a happy person? Does it need to? This search…endless…it never, ever stops. There is no end, ever. I don’t even know what my goal is. Do I even need one?
If you look on my blog at the widget on the side that shows posts per month, it really doesn’t track how much I have written, but how happy I am in my job. The more posts, the more misery. Yes, there are some happy posts, but behind them there was some sadness that made me write it and a conscious decision to mask it as a happy post.
So what is it that I seek?
I know that the search is exhausting, tiring.
The other day while sitting at the table with my wife, she asked me what I was researching. I was researching a new principal of a middle school in NYC who comes from a Dalton school. I had heard of neither, so I searched…no end to the search. I could keep going and going. That question from my wife has really snapped me out of my quest. It made me feel silly. I felt stupid. Why wasn’t I doing something fun? Why wasn’t I doing something that feeds me…it just left me empty. I wasn’t creating something or doing anything that would result in some concrete product. It wasn’t fun, yet I fill my life with these searches. Just today another book came in the mail, after being delayed by snow for so long I honestly can’t remember what I was searching for…the title, The Gift of Fear.
Well I know I am going to do less searching on my computer for the next month or so 😉
I decided to pick up where I left off on an old music podcast I used to do. I checked on iTunes and even after a two year absence it was still in the top ten for its genre. I opened my old email box and there were tons of songs being submitted by artists. I felt good just thinking about it.
I am going to do less writing on my blog about my searches. I am going to do more writing about what we are doing in class. Concrete examples, no dreaming and wishing and coulda, woulda, and shouldas. I have already set up an alternative blog to begin those postings.
I am going to try to heed my wife’s advice and “do things that feed you.” In education, that means presenting at traditional conferences where people come seeking concrete ideas, and not philosophical large group conversations. Last week I had a few sessions approved for the New England League of Middle Schools Annual Conference. “2.Go,” a nuts and bolts session on tech tools. “Your First Day of School,” in which I am going to do my first day of school for the attendees. And “10 Questions,” 10 questions that I use that guide the design of my units.
I am going to hike more. I am going to plan a backpacking trip for this summer. I love it so much, but find so many excuses to not hike. I need to be outdoors, that is one thing that without a doubt, feeds me.
When started this comment, before I shifted gears way up there at the top, I was going to also make it a post on my blog and declare a break from the internet, from my blog, from my search. After writing, I realize that would solve nothing. I just looked back to the papers I printed out with the comments from your post and the line “We have bigger fish to fry popped out.” I need to fish more. I am going to fish more.
Cathy commented about how hard it is to figure out what resonates with someone that you meet. I think that I have forgotten what resonates with me, I have had trouble communicating with myself about what I need.
Maybe all of this searching wasn’t to find out where I should be going, but where I should get off. Is it time to get off? Take a break, and find another path less traveled? I think so. I think I have had blinders on for a while.
I used to lead backpacking trips when I was younger. I always started each trip by stopping often and having the kids appreciate where we were at any given moment. Yes, we usually had a mountain top in our sights as our goal, but there were many days when mother nature did not want us to make it to the top. It was important that we all realized that we were there not to get to the end, but for everything in between. I think I have been too focused on an end I could never name, see, or find. The searching made me feel like I was moving forward. I forgot to see and appreciate where I was at any given moment. I need to stop and see more. I don’t know…lost for words here.
No witty last line or thought…no final question. I feel as though I have thought out this thought to the end. Feels good 🙂
Paul,
I will keep this response short and vague and perhaps we can move forward to something else.
Thank you for leading this hike. I am enjoying walking with you to the mountaintop. Don’t worry about getting to the top, let’s just walk and talk.
We are nowhere and it is now. That is all we need to know.
I see this search as learning. We are cursed/blessed with it. As for goals, I don’t think so. We just need to be aware of where we are headed like you said. We need to feed ourselves. Or else the search will always be fruitless:
Cannot wait to see what you create. “do things that feed you.”
Finally,
Where do we go next? We have establish we have a connection based on our otherness, now what? Music? The outdoors? Let’s create something together and see if we can connect on a deeper level.
Just wanted to clarify… when I said I was done, I am not done with the conversation(s), I am done searching for a awhile. For me, not for engaging with others or even myself I suppose. Maybe I am ready to have my learning be more spontaneous? More random? More of a surprise?
Sorry Paul, I know you said you were done, but have you read this article about searching/wanting vs finding/liking? http://www.slate.com/id/2224932/pagenum/all
There’s also a nice blogpost here about the phenomenon.
http://vannevar.blogspot.com/2009/08/joys-of-search-vs-finding.html
For me, it’s about finding balance–it’s similar to needing to find a balance between consuming and creating. I know I do too much searching and consuming, and not enough enjoying and creating.
Couple the drive to search with a yearning for human connection, and the Internet is a powerful place, indeed.
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Wow, you guys and Cathy, such great insightful comments. I am sitting here sighing because I have to get going in about 15 minutes and I never feel like I have enough time to comment the way I want. So more often than not, I end up not commenting. Paul, I really enjoyed reading your blog’s “Comments?” where you spoke about not needing to lurk around and feel like one’s comments wouldn’t be good enough (that’s exactly how I usually feel)… but that’s probably for another post.
I have recently discovered that I have a new morning routine, and I can’t figure out if it’s a good thing or not. My iphone has totally become the one material item I could not live without. It’s my alarm clock, my half marathon trainer, the list goes on. But because it is my alarm clock it is the very first thing I touch every morning. Recently, after turning off my alarm, I have been going to my twitter app, to see what’s been happening in the 6-7 hours that I’ve been asleep. And Thursday morning I came across this conversation and have been thinking about it ever since. But now that it’s Sunday night, and my list of things to get done today is still full, I still haven’t commented, and in cyber-time a conversation that was happening four days ago feels like I’ve missed the boat. And this would be exactly when I wouldn’t comment. ( I copied and saved my earlier comments, when I had to get going to something, somewhere else ).
Justin’s video resonated with me too, especially about “filling up on shreds of connections.” But I don’t think that I have extended myself enough online to really make connections with other people, except for an odd comment here and there. So rather than these shreds filling my soul (for lack of a better word) I feel like these “shreds” are shreds of information that fill up my head. Was it Cathy or Paul who left a link in one of their comments to an article about our need to search for info online, and how this leads to more searching? I think it was Paul, and I know that I could go back and look, but I’m not going to. I feel like all these shreds of information come at me fast and furious and I can’t keep up, and am realizing that I don’t need to. But when I come across something that I want to hang on to, I haven’t yet figured out how. And so I often feel like I’m trying to get a drink from a gushing waterhose (I think I read that somewhere, but can’t remember) and worse I feel like these shreds of information, some of it amazing stuff, fill up my head so much that it feels like everything else in there gets all jumbled up. And then I look up at 8pm on a Sunday night, and wonder where the day went.
Like Paul, I regularly find myself thinking about the lives of these people, the edu-stars who always seem to be posting to their blogs, to twitter, and making thoughtful comments on other people’s blogs. How are they so incredibly productive? It does seem to me like there are far more men out there in cyberspace, or at least are creating more than women, and I wonder if this is because someone else is looking after the house, the children, the animals, etc. I don’t have children or animals. I have an apartment that I share with my partner, that is more often than not disorganized mostly because I me. Tidying up after myself was one of the things on my list today (Jabiz, after travelling, having a housekeeper is what I miss most about living overseas) but it just wasn’t a priority. It may become one soon, when I run out of clean clothes to wear.
But all that said about shreds of information. I do feel it in my soul too. Well, sort of. I don’t feel that I’ve made these connections through the internet that people speak of, but I am also aware that that takes time and energy to develop. Something I haven’t commited to yet. However, Justin Hall’s words about “what if what you do, turns out to drive people away from you?” I feel that. Often. Really often. And before very recently, I never would have commented online about anything that came close to sharing my vulnerabilities. You’re making an impact, Jabiz 🙂 So, that leaves me wondering, am I turning to the internet to fill an emptiness in me that comes from less than fulfilling relationships with people in real life? I often feel like the outsider in my group of friends and family. I seem to be the one doing things differently and looking at things with a different perspective than my peers. But perhaps, I really am the same as them. And perhaps, I’m just as unfulfilling to them at times, as they are to me. And why would I think that meeting people online would be any different. Except that it might be. But right now, as I’m sitting here in this crazy funk, how arrogant of me is it to feel that these relationships are unfulfilling? Is it arrogant of me?
I suppose the answer is as Cathy said above. To find balance. Balance between time connecting with people online and in person. Balance between spending time online that is productive and time that is “free.”
On that note, and because I feel I’ve been rambling for some time now… I’m going to go, turn off my computer and jump in the tub with a book.
Oh, one more thing, I think you retweeted this statement sometime since Thursday… “The way you do anything is the way you do everything.” I’ve been thinking about this, and I think I’ve become pretty cautious with how I do things. I like to not commit to anything before I’ve had time to check things out. Maybe that explains why I haven’t really been commenting much or reaching out online? In any case, I don’t like thinking that I’d describe myself as “cautious.” But maybe that’s just how I am.
Wow! Is right for you Tammy. Let me just say how proud it makes me that you all have engaged so deeply on this post. I love seeing comments of such depth and careful thinking/soul searching.
But you see Tammy, it is hard to stay connected. We are so used to staying caught up that a four day old blog posts seems ancient. Here I am at the tail end of my lunch break trying to scratch out a few words. Why? Cuz if I don’t I will forget and leave it, thus causing me guilt and anxiety.
But this cannot be healthy. We must learn how to drink from the fire hose at a rate that is comfortable and productive for us as individuals. Don’t worry about the Edu0technoarti, just find what works for you and go with it. Like anything else we learn how to filter and monitor our media and informational consumption. I think it takes time to get the hang of it.
Secret I am finding is balance indeed.
Thanks everyone for taking the time to make this a place to think out loud. I really do appreciate it.
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