a great yop into the universe

If you haven't heard, Lance Arthur is posting a new piece of writing to Glassdog every day for the entire month of December. And every day, he's deleting the one from the day before. Download, delete, write, upload. No archive, no permalink. It's about impermanence, he says.

I say: Whatever flips that light switch in your head, man.

But since I know this particular gem is going to be gone in a few hours, I'm going to archive it here. Copyright violation? Probably. But the guy lives two stops on the N-Judah from me. If he's pissed, he can come tell me personally.

Oh, and, as usual, the emphasis is mine, all mine.

What's it like to be you?

Truthfully, no one asks this. And even if they did, I wouldn't really know how to answer it. Would you? I think if you know what it's like, you're either very shallow and can therefore easily define yourself for someone else (which, in some ways, in an envious position to be in) or you're lying in order to placate them and make them go away. Maybe the whole point of this entire exercise -- all the writing, all the designing, all the words and music and numbers, the sharing and hiding, the wishing and telling, the remembering and forgetting and imagining and desiring -- maybe it's all an attempt to answer that question. Why else do it? What else is a great yop into the universe for? You want to let someone know you're here. It doesn't seem to matter who you are or what your situation is, this need to tell comes back and you keep it up and so do I. Others abandon it, finding not satisfaction but rather more of the same that they get out of life. More disappointment, more noise, more ignorance and misunderstanding. I would like to believe in karma, but I don't. I believe in chaos and happenstance. People die for absolutely no reason all the time. Other people go on living for that same absense of sense. There's no rhyme or reason to any of it, other than that you ascribe to it to try to make heads or tails out of it all. You're afraid of what mught happen, and if it does, that you'll be unprepared for it. So now here's this, reems and reems of empty space to fill up. Spill it all like milk on glass, hoping some of it sticks and someone will remember you in the bigger sense. Or maybe not, maybe there's no reason at all for any of it. Which, I must say, I find much more comforting in the end.

– Lance Arthur

Thanks, Lance. I needed that.

{ 10:43pm }

» Lance is the Terminator of the web. And I mean that in a good way. He cannot be stopped and we're glad because of it.

– christopher  { 12.12.01 @ 10:20am }

» Lance as the Terminator...ok that's going to stick with me for the rest of the day.

– dangerman  { 12.12.01 @ 10:48am }

» Ah, but the impermanence is beautiful. And if he's doing this to examine what it's like to be himself (and esp. if he doesn't believe in karma), then it (the impermanence) is honest, too. We're all changing, and perhaps we really don't need who we were to be who we are. Or something like that.

– matt  { 12.12.01 @ 1:13pm }

» Oh my! I don’t know about all this talk of early weblog termination. It almost seems like some type of blog kevorkianism, doesn’t it? However, in keeping with the theme of impermanence, please delete this comment after a few hours.

– fishrush  { 12.12.01 @ 9:00pm }

» i don't archive anymore either -- haven't since before august -- but my rationale is different, and perhaps less ostensibly artistic. some people prefer their weblog to be as a journal, where you can go back and see who you were. others prefer it to be a snapshot of the present: fuck the past, for this is who i am. (though my entries reach back to november, largely because i am lazy to delete them.)

what is interesting to me is not that lance arthur is deleting old content (whether he is truly deleting it or simply removing it from the web is unknown), but rather that he is writing more frequently than once a month for any span of time.

– moz  { 12.13.01 @ 10:38am }

» oh, but part of the joy in existing is constantly changing. i keep just about everything i write....and every 7 or 8 months i pull it all out and read. everything that i write is part of me....i wrote it because i had to. i love looking back and remembering exactly why i wrote something, or what i was feeling at the time. i love seeing how my life has been shaped by certain experiences, people i've met, places i've been. and of course there is a part of me that wants something to still be here when i go....something that says "i existed"! even if it is some silly little writing. but i do admire what he's doing.....i think it's about living in the moment....letting go of what isn't there anymore...the past. derek, thanks for sharing this....on some level, i needed lance's perspective....it reinforces a project i've been working on. thanks!!

– celisa  { 12.13.01 @ 12:02pm }

» I've been doing something like that for over a year now. I have a weblog that goes back no more than 30 days. Because everything isn't worth preserving.

– Patrick Connors  { 12.13.01 @ 3:14pm }

» I've had a craving for anonimity for a while now and am seriously contemplating pruning my blog - deleting all the more personal entries after a while.

Also wishing for a 'subs only' feature in the CMTs I'm using.

I guess I'm getting nervous as more and more people (I know) are getting on line and will probably start hunting for my sites.

– Caroline  { 12.14.01 @ 8:19am }