MultiPost

I’ve been getting a lot of email asking why I haven’t been posting more. “Isn’t this a blog?” one asks. “Aren’t you supposed to be writing posts every day?”

Fathering, teaching, and writing duties have kept me from posting. Sorry for that – but there’s more than enough to read out there, already. I’d like to save this space for when I’ve really got something to say. Being obligated to post every day would mean having to pull something out of my butt, no matter what. Imagine if people only wrote stuff down when they really felt like it? Because they had something they needed to share?

That’s the way this blog has been going for the past few years. And, lately, it has been a victim of too little time. I’ve been raising a baby, paying for a family, teaching my classes, getting two (count them) books ready for publication, writing my comic book, and doing a ton of interviews and introductions for art books and the like. It’s busy season.

That said, here’s what I’d post today if I were posting:

1) CurrentTV has ended up being a bit better than I expected, given the format and style of the first few weeks. Yes, the format is still aspirational and cool (to me, that’s a bad thing) but the video itself – at least some of it – is pretty amazing. The segments shot by real people going through Katrina’s aftermath, by a videojournalist in Sierre Leone, or at the recent rallies, has been gripping. Somehow, it’s like taking the immediacy of a “COPS” video and doing something real with it. The stories come off as more real and connected because they’re not trapped in the standard professional news format. Here are some guys in a boat looking for survivors of the hurricane. And you’re traveling with them, Blair Witch style.

So I take back some of what I said. There’s something going on there on CurrentTV that isn’t going on elsewhere.

2) Oy. I don’t know when I’ve ever experienced as much doubt about America’s immediate future as I do now. Let’s not call it a Bush thing, please, because this will be going on after he’s gone. We’ve moved into a different phase of American history, folks, and we may just be on the wrong side of the border this time.

3) Parenting. No, not everyone has to do it, but I’m getting the feeling that it’s a crucial phase of human development. It’s quite a challenge, and it forces all the same kinds of issues one faces when thinking about will, good/evil, law and order, social construction….really, it’s all in there.

4) Writing. What’s next? Everyone seems to ask this whenever I’m just coming out with something or somethings. Honestly, this time I don’t know. And I’m trying not to get set on something because the two main projects I do have coming out right now – Get Back in the Box and Testament – represent the culmination of the last two decades of inquiry and experimentation. So these projects aren’t over just because they’re about to be published.

Thanks everyone who wrote, concerned to see if I was okay. Yes yes, I am fine (if no sleep and zombie-parenthood is considered the appropriate state for me to be in), and you’ll have a lot more to read really soon.