Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Thoughts on the Dawn of a New Decade

As 2009 comes to a close I find myself amazed at all that is new. This has been one of the most challenging and life changing years in my brief history. Things have been re-born, things have died and much has been learned. I can only remember one other year in my life in which so much rapid change occurred in so brief a time period. For one thing, I’m writing this blog.

This is my attempt to engage. To be amidst things; challenging myself to participate, rather than simply observing from the side-lines; which is actually a much more comfortable place for me. So comfortable in fact, that in my life, I chose to use music and songs to express myself. Perhaps, that, in and of itself was an attempt to take the focus off me, to hide in the subterfuge of sonic layers where the message was more identifiable than the messenger. With that in mind I did a little research.

What do people, people who don’t consider them selves to be professional writers, write about exactly? I went to countless blogs; admittedly some were better than others. Suddenly, I understood my own resistance in a whole new way. It wasn’t my ignorance of how to work a new tool; although, that too was intimidating. It was, well, to my eyes anyway, that it encouraged a type of narcissism that I have been taught to believe is ‘unbecoming’.

I instinctually wanted to avoid the incessant requests from twitter, facebook, myspace, etc., as I log on and am greeted with “What are you doing?” “What do you think?” “Stefanie! Tell us what’s on your mind”. I feel accosted; as if I have to respond to these commands, which are relentless; demanding I constantly produce, think, spew, and for God sake make it witty! As if, it is imperative that everyone has an opinion about everything; and that everyone’s opinions at all times, matters.

I chose my medium of expression (i.e., my songs and singing) and in retrospect I realize this may have been [in part] because I wanted some modicum of control over who got in, what was revealed, and what I could choose to keep hidden. Presupposing that as a musician and songwriter it is to my benefit to let as many people in as possible, many of these outlets offer a problematic proposal for a person, who by nature, is relatively private.

The truth is; I can’t figure out why anyone who didn’t actually know me would care what I think or what I’m doing? It’s all this sharing and revealing, all this showing and telling, as if we are all now on constant public display. All of these things encourage us to assert our existence as meaningful and memorable; perpetuating the illusion, if only for a moment, that in the vast history of humanity, with the million, if not billions of people who have lived and died before us, that we alone, actually matter beyond the fertilizer we’ll become.

Yet we do matter collectively; all these ideas, thoughts, feelings, beliefs, become part of something larger and more important. The truth is, I love to log onto facebook and read all my friends comments, or see pictures from an event they attended the night before. These tools really do help us to feel more connected to one another. I am encouraged that this is the direction of things because it speaks to our humanity and serves our deeper need to be connected to one another and not just “know a lot of stuff”.

Not to state the obvious here but social networks really do enhance our ability to communicate with one another. They give us the means not only to reach out, but to be reached and it is not technology that is doing the reaching. We do the reaching, each and every one of us; taking time to say hello, lending support, asking for help, giving encouragement and sharing our experiences with one another in a much broader sense than we ever had the means to before.

I’m going to try and use these channels to strengthen that connection. I have no idea, as time goes on, what I will write about; sometimes it may be light, sometimes it may be heavy and sometimes I may lay silent for a time. My hope is that it makes you feel a part of something; something that is bigger than you or me and at the same time enables us to celebrate how important each one of us is individually. It is a New Year, and the dawn of a new decade. I’m looking forward to getting know you.