Fame or Famine

“…this company and, indeed, the entire organization is an informal federation of individuals who come in, make a contribution and, in most cases, move on. Secondly, I am reminded that this art form, like this federation, is fragile and ephemeral, dependant on human agreement and subtle affinities in a matrix of time and circumstance that constantly shift in surprising ways.” — Bill T. Jones

Reading Bill’s Blog today, this phrase struck me as we continue to have our conversation via the web about the role of bloggers vs. “traditional” journalists. Stay with me for this metaphor…

Traditional journalism is like a traditional dance company. You have a director/editor, whose vision supports the choreography/writing of the dancers/writers. It is under one hand, and the resulting performance/magazine is, at root, a reflection of that one guiding hand, for better or worse. The best director/editor is one who can see the weaknesses and strengths of individual dancer/writers, and guide them to either improve them or help each other compensate and, in the best case, complement each other.

The blogosphere, on the other hand, is mindless. There is no moving finger writing; it is a bunch of individuals, each doing whatever they like. It’s more like a contact improv dance; we all have this space we’ve agreed on to perform in (the internet) and sometimes we find a place where we can move together for a bit, exploring the motions of ideas bouncing off of each other through comment and link, and then we move apart.

I can sort of predict some of our little dances; I know that when So You Think You Can Dance comes back, I’ll be able to interact with a group of people who do not share my passions the rest of the year. The rest of the time, there are unexpected dances that happen, interactions that produce connections that resonate both between the dancers/writers and the audience they perform/write for.

And so we dance with our laptops and keyboards and mobile phones, and sometimes, once in a while, something truly magical happens. And we share it, and it makes it all worthwhile.

The rest of the time? Bill has something to say about that, too:

“I must make my peace with what we do and how we’re able to do it, the known and the unknown in the future and that ever-present gnawing hunger in the belly of this, our enterprise.”

3 Comments