Ultimately, we hear things because we cannot see everything.
Slavoj Zizek, Gaze and Voice as Love Objects
There are so many voices here in the blogosphere. I love listening to those voices.
There are the calmer, gentler voices of older people who have finally got the time to indulge in a life-long passion. They have finally got the time to write after retirement.
There are the voices of college students, very social, excited, always sharing important stories and events and always willing to learn.
There are the voices of even younger teenagers trying out their craft with a host of possibilities in front of them. Some of them already show great talent and reveal an innocence about worldly ways to succeed. This hope is probably only a gift the young can have which will make them bring change to old, fossilized methods of experiencing life, reading and writing.
There are people who write about real sadness or dilemmas whose honesty often shines through their lack of craft, if any. Then there are those who write about social issues. The best of them let their own personalities take a back seat.
When you pass them by on the street you hardly ever know who they are or what they are thinking.
But here, in the blog world, which is supposedly not a real world, you hear them from the inside out in a manner of speaking. More honest. More thoughtful. With some of the necessities of daily life filtered out (rushing somewhere, presenting a facade to the world, reputation anxieties)You see them when they have taken out a moment from their daily lives to think and speak.
Sometimes people surprise you. People you’ve known a long time and thought you knew very well show an aspect on social media that you did not know existed before. You discover the quiet, non-careerist homemaker actually reads a lot. Or the techie-minded neighbour is into philosophy. Or a perfectly regular and courteous cousin has such dogmatic ideas. You would not have known these aspects existed unless you read what they wrote or things they “liked.”
Which are the real voices? Those you meet on the street or those you hear on the ‘net? Does it matter?
It doesn’t except that these voices are here to stay in addition to those “real” voices that were already there. That’s not such a bad thing!
©bottledworder, 2013. https://bottledworder.wordpress.com
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