HTG 3.0

In November of 2007 I completely revamped this website, launching what I then called HTG 2.0. At that point I had been goofing around online for a couple of years, in fits and spurts, without any focus or clue as to what the hell I was doing. The revamp was just the little project I needed to keep occupied while I was laid up recovering from knee surgery. What a glorious mess I constructed! It contained about a dozen different tabs across the top, each page branching out into several other sub-pages, each with its own customized side bar full of widgets. Everything you see on the site now existed then in some form, in addition to everything that exists now on my other website, plus a bunch of other random pages. And all for my own amusement! Judging from the frequency of comments, hardly anyone paid me the slightest bit of attention. (Apparently, one can check “stats” to find out about such things, but I haven’t yet been curious enough to look into that.) I’ll tell you what though–even though I was talking to myself, I was pretty excited about HTG 2.0 because, as I said at the time, “All this is really just a way to light a fire under my ass.” And it worked. For a while anyway. My blogging output has tended to wax and wane in the last few years, depending on the demands of my job. I participated in Reverb 10 last month as a way to light that fire again, and in these first two weeks of twenty-eleven I’ve spent what free time I could steal tweaking both my websites in preparation for the next great period of prodigious creative output. And…. GO! And it starts….. NOW!

*eep*

Okay, so the changes to the sites are modest, but I did manage to break ground on my “writing project in gestation.” The working title is Esperando el milagro, so whenever you see those words in the post title, you’ll know it’s about to get weird. It’s going to be what it’s going to be, but I don’t intend to write a book in the traditional sense. Henry Miller taught me most of what I know about writing, mostly because he happens to be one of the few authors I’ve read extensively. I like the way his style is described on his Wikipedia page: “a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism, one that is distinctly always about and expressive of the real-life Henry Miller and yet is also fictional.” That sounds pretty close to what I’m envisioning for my project, except I don’t like the term “fictional,” because it carries with it connotations like “not true,” “not real,” and “didn’t actually happen.” As far as I’m concerned, what happens in the imagination can be just as important as (and often far more interesting than) what “actually” happens in terms of observable behavior. Who wants to watch surveillance videos or read courtroom transcriptions? Real life has both an inside and an outside, and the dividing line is not as clear as one might think.

Whatever the project turns out to be, like my music it’s not likely to ever leave this blog, but that doesn’t make it any less than what it could be. I’m reminded of a blog post by Patrick Rhone that I read just before Reverb 10 kicked off. In fact, it was R10 founder Gwen Bell who linked to it on her twitter feed. Here’s what Patrick has to say to us bloggers:

You are writers.

I have become increasingly uncomfortable with the title “blogger”. I think this term cuts wrong in several directions.

First, I think it reduces the respect and credibility of those who write and publish online. Especially those who perform this craft well and are deserving of the same recognition and respect society has long bestowed upon writers in other mediums. In fact, take any of your best journalists, authors, etc. and I could show you an equal number of “bloggers” that write just as well if not better.

Secondly, I think it helps to absolve many of becoming better at a craft that they choose to participate in by giving it a label that divorces it from the very thing it is. Writing, editing, publishing – These things that have been happening for thousands of years. The methods and medium may be different but the craft is exactly the same. It does not need a new noun. The fact that technology has progressed to the point where we can do it ourselves does not make the means of the labor different. What technology has done is allow anyone who wishes to write and publish the ability to do so no matter if they have the talent to write or not.

As with any art, part is talent but I would argue that an even larger part is also learning how to write. Once learned, practice (lots and lots of it) is what will help you eventually find, what we writers like to call, your “voice”. That little something in your writing that is uniquely you. Once you find that (and only when you find it), you will be able to cast off any other term that the collective may chose to bestow upon you. You are a writer.

That’s the spirit! At least that’s the spirit I’m taking with me into the next phase of my creative life. HTG 3.0 baby! It’s no longer about becoming this, that, or the other thing–a writer, a musician, a creative person. Duh, I’ve been doings these things all along!

This is it.

*eep*