Voices
I don't have time to blog. (And I lie, if you haven't noticed).
But it's not just time that Allen lacks. My mother and I attended one of his two-day workshops in Cambridge, Mass., last fall, and in that setting the GTD guru is supremely self-confident, sure of his voice, of his material. But as a new blogger, he is finding his way tentatively, as he explains here:
And for Robert (and others who may not be as vocal as he was about wishing I would blog more), may I just run the apology for now that I'm trying to find my own voice in the medium. It's not like I don't get a chance to share myself, verbally and otherwise, with lots of folks. And most of the time I am aware of many other things as higher priorities for my creative time. Also, much of what I have to share will best be served contained and integrated into a different context. But this medium is a unique frame that draws out its own kind of pictures from its participants. Indeed, There's nothing like the salon. Nostalgic memories, hanging out at the Cafe Odeon in Zurich, at age 18 (as an American Field Service exchange student there in '63-'64), with the ghosts of Jung and dadaism...
I am intrigued by this problem of finding the appropriate voice for an entirely new writing medium. You feel as if you are talking to someone, but it also feels anonymous, launching words into cyberspace as if dropping them off in a bottle from an island. In reading other blogs, I find that honesty, or the appearance of it, seems to be a common flavor. And intimacy, as if the conversation is happening, as David Allen suggests, in a cafe in a foreign country, far from home, when you are 18 and full of possibilities.
The women are on St. Thomas today, shopping. So I have treated myself to nearly seven hours of reading and writing on the porch, listening to an island hip hop and R&B station in my headphones, 105 Jamz, while rereading for the third time Edward Said's brainy argument for humanism. This seems right, I thought. One of his most appealing insights is how fertile the zone is between cultures, between wildly varying views of the world. I knew I had successfully tricked myself into falling deeper into hip hop reality when I found myself snapped to attention by the strange voice of a nasally white guy interrupting the black, island rhythms with the Bloomberg financial report. Oh yeah, that's what I sound like!
Friday, January 28, 2005
