Those Facebook status updates take their toll. You don’t want to update it all the time; this isn’t Twitter, you know! But in the end, your status does sort of change every few minutes, and nothing is really true for very long. Or is it? Maybe we should have cumulative status updates in which we just add the new bit onto the bit before and let it become, over time, a product of its own past, like ourselves. No addition needs to be long, just a line or so. But how to identify the key, the critical truth of any given moment? What is my status? And of course, there are things you can’t put. Indelicate, or socially sensitive, or too obvious, or just plain bad. Or wrong. As it is, indecision about what to say – the update being necessary because the last one was two days old and firmly out-of-date – means that, first, I accidentally click on nothingness and get an update that says, “Ms B Is.” This is CLEARLY unsatisfactory! And it means that, secondly, I don’t know what to put, and end up putting a negative based on the idea of being someone else’s words. This is not satisfactory either, even if it is quite true that I am not someone else’s words.
Five minutes later, trying to get to bed, I find myself in the kitchen thinking about myself in the third person. Ms B is back from Brockley. Ms B has forgotten all her words. Ms B is cleaning the filter on the clothes drier. Ms B is opening the door of the fridge. Ms B is in her jim-jams. Ms B is a product of her own words. Ms B wants to be letter of the month. Ms B is in a relationship. Ms B will be attending the Magma launch tomorrow. Ms B has accepted a friend request. Ms B thinks this weird internet-fuelled solipsism is going to make her write bad poetry sooner or later. Ms B doesn’t know what the week will bring. Ms B thinks she might not want to know. Ms B says, it was money, but it wasn’t a waste of money. Ms B the money was only resting in my account. Ms B is not only truth or consequences, but maybe and consequences. Ms B didn’t read a thing all weekend. Ms B would recognise the voice of Marie Lloyd anywhere. Ms B still needs to rest her eyes a bit, truth be told. Ms B sounds insane, writing these tiny sentences.
And now, good night. This hasn’t even been a proper post. Ms B says sweet dreams.
1 Comment
June 23, 2008 at 5:16 am
Insanity? try hanging round the guaridan BB with the pedestrain self declared anon poets practicing under the monker of thebookofsand iamnothere, MrBomber etc and you’ll soon discover the price of being a bore.
Status, ah, Poetry and status, really you know katy, i think it is all in the s/he of you and Me, Mind, the mind B.
IT is great, for me it has been a lifeline of learning, as it meant i did not get unhappy as i would habe done 20 yrs ago when it wasn’t here. This is coz it let me lern and publish, build an audience, all on my own, and not have to be concerned with my intellectual inferiors, say, who in days prior i would have to go bending the knee to and listen to as if they were God.
well maybe this is over egging it, but you know what i mean, true poetic Status can only be conferred by our own mind, as it reads what we have just written.
Imagine a room of 100 ppl, and the Poetry Status of ms X is the question being publically answered after a period of juding, and 99 all agree after lots of back room shenangans, loads of really major effort by the ruthless in the room appearing all calm and light, as if what is being agreed upon just happens out the blue.
Imagine they have decided X is 0/10, a U upgradeable duffer, but they are all wring, and horror ! 100% wrong, that far from bein a fick, X is actually more talented then they are. And imagine only one person knew this reality as truth, that 99% were conning themselves, or not, but whatever was going on, was really the work of six of seven of the top judges, the ones getting payed to be there say, and speak. The ones who get to act the star.
This is the problem withy judging Status, particularly ouw own, as one day we can read and think we are shakespeare amnd the next, mister shit. And we can change on a whim. Some seemingly minor mishap, setting us off on a major wobble with the self confidence.
H, one of the few poets who i think is not my intellectual inferior, reckons poets and artists exist in the “own esteem” and judge themselves effectively, the last word on what we do, how good, the status, lies with our own measure alone, and so have a million face book pals, ten ts eliot gongs, it makes not a jot to the writing.
By the time facey cum out i was sorted and didn’t need any more *pretend* freinds online, as i had 170 on myspace, and i started laughing as i thought, nah, this is it, i felt some natural IT terminus in relation to facebook, that this was the shit con, one too far ad all that.
And it seems i am right, going on what i hear, not that this final decision came as a result of your excellent practice, deposit of time and person, but all along i thought it was all me arse.
Status, poetry hinesty, how far can we speak before our friends become offended?
what if we have a million, all to be thought of?
what if we have none?
we are still a single human being, and i learned that status, cannot be conferred unless from we within, the mind itself, based on how good we think we are doing, and the joy is seeing the huddled expert Poetry Mangers, corporate execs dashing about in a busy do, for what?
for themselves first, usually, as Poetry is love and peace, to the serious poet, i think, and therefore as loing as we are happy as a person, and not taking any notice of the sideshow facebook ratings of IT centric artists who mistake a billion friends for being proof they are TS Eliots the only poet i think respect being hoinest we can’t fail, or rather expect nowt and watch the rest expending effort on their masterplans to Status, knowing they would be better off doing as s.he does, learn happy
love
Iamnothere, misternoh, MrBomber Ishouldapologise and