On the Exchange of Moments

Written by Edward Champion

Posted on April 22, 2008
Filed Under Uncategorized

Dude, like, there’s this whole web conservation moment going down. The same bullshit about how there’s all this bullshit on the Web and how it’s up to us to be responsible and all for our content. I hereby abdicate editing on this post. Because I want to tell you about why I’m up right now and, hell, maybe I’ll go into the the mistake I made of imbibing two cups of coffee and a rather large bottle of Coca-Cola to meet two deadlines and to get through a rather long day. The thought of pressing the backspace key and giving into this prim and proper nonsense might appall me if I didn’t view it as so laughable. Ha ha! How trivial it is to type those five characters and a space! I just watched the first episode of the fourth season of Doctor Who and HOLY SHIT! Rose Tyler has returned! She looks utterly gloomy and it’s very clear that Russell T. Davies is trying to go for a big finish here before he hands over his car keys from the producer who’s going to take over. Within long paragraphs, there may be meaning or there may not be. In gushing about Doctor Who, which I railed against not long ago because of its campy qualities, am I confessing to readers that I am going back on my original promise, which involved something about boycotting the show and suggesting in some language or some such that Russell T. Davies should be stopped? I’m too indolent and otherwise worn out to drag up the post. I don’t think it’s particularly important. In dwelling upon that important moment, am I perhaps finding another important moment? Or am I discounting the importance of that moment by describing that moment as important? Well, all I have to say is that I found a YouTube clip and I watched the surprise disappearance of Rose Tyler FOUR times! In a row. Just to be sure. Now that particular process of watching Rose Tyler reappear with a melodramatic sad glimmer on her face was, for some strange reason, important. But it is not important by the new rules of the game. Queen Victoria has suggested that because that moment is not thought out, because I am simply gushing on about a YouTube clip replaying a moment that I watched on an illicitly downloaded torrent, it is therefore invalidated by the new criteria of selecting precisely what it is I need to write about. But since I have spent a good portion of the day — deadlines, yo — selecting text and moving it around, why then should I bother to do it again? Am I not allowed one moment of expressing this moment? Or is meaning exonerated here? If I am not permitted to write about a moment about a moment about a moment, then I am somehow a lesser life form by these new rules. If I am fumbling around in the dark for the keys to that moment, producing much noise and less signal, but otherwise removing myself viscerally into this great realm of Deep Thought and Substance, then I am doing the Lord’s Work. How one chooses to express themselves is their own concern, really. How one chooses to publicly embarrass themselves about, say, Rose Tyler returning in Doctor Who is really that one person’s moment. Who is anyone to take that moment away from this person? If I hear an annoying conversation, I ignore it. Or better yet, I participate it and see if I can raise some hell. I am my own filter. You are your own filters too. Together the common filters come together and we all boogie and bust out the bourbon and otherwise figure out what that moment might have meant. Perhaps we all shared some shred of that moment and wanted to come to terms with it. Perhaps all of us are fumbling in the dark and perhaps all of us can find moments atop those moments. And then just as we experience another seemingly inconsequential moment in the real world — by feeling a gust of air, by hearing the clink of a quarter atop the counter at a bodega, by examining the slide of a window going up so that it’s not so hot in the apartment — we can then find additional stimuli to respond to. And you know what? Even though the little scroll bar on the right side of this window within a browser window is advancing, I’m not going to go back and check what I just wrote. Perhaps there’s some purpose in simply rattling on like this. Perhaps not. But once it is out there, it’s up to others to make sense of it or ignore it. I think it’s a colossally arrogant thing for this Publishing 2.0 guy to say. And I say this as someone who does value the editing and massaging of content. You wouldn’t tell some person spinning a hula hoop to stop spinning the hula hoop because it’s purposeless. Because it doesn’t add anything to the universe. Because it’s utterly trivial and without intelligence. The point is that the person spinning the hula hoop is having a good deal of fun and perhaps others who are watching this person with the hula hoop are also having fun, and maybe they are thinking that they should go out and get a hula hoop and have a bit of fun themselves. And they in turn might inspire other people to spin hula hoops around their hips. And then perhaps the sensation of the hula hoop might inspire another thought, another feeling, that could lead to something important. The Archimedes principle in action. People often blog or produce content because it leads to other things, other thoughts, other feelings. And to wave a schoolmarmish finger at those who produce blather is to be a humorless asshole. When you can just ignore it and move on to others who are spinning the hula hoops that keep things grooving.

ComicCon podcast forthcoming!