Epilogue

2006-01-23T21:14:00.000Z

WARNING: Waiting For Bloggo is intended to be read from the beginning. If you read this epilogue first, you run the risk of it being unintelligible and also you will ruin any enjoyment you might get from reading the whole blog from start to finish. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On 25th November, 2005, the first post of a new blog, Waiting for Bloggo, appeared. It said, quite simply: “Nothing to be done.” It was posted by david. The only other detail apparent on the blog was that there was another contributor: elizabeth. That was it. No other clues. No description. Nothing.

The opening post was, obviously, the first line of Beckett’s Waiting For Godot, and the blog’s title, well…!

I can’t recall exactly how or why the idea for Bloggo arose. And that’s the nature of life, I suppose. A thought strikes, a clock strikes, and poof, there you are… up and running in a new blog as a literary adventure, or up and running in pursuit of anything else, come to think of it.

I’d hardly been blogging forever. A couple of months at most. But the medium fascinated me. I could see how and why it might be attractive as a diary, a showcase for one’s miserable writing talents, a political platform, a race track for a cyber hobbyhorse. But, it just seemed that there was something else about it, a potential for experiment, for a sort of spontaneous creativity outlet. And, hey, here was the big thing: with the potential for an audience if it was done right. Writers need an audience.

So, in between posting whimsies and bits of fiction and photographs on my own blog, I explored other blogs. They seemed to me to fall into certain types, certain groups, one of which was the antsy pantsy blog, as my future co-writer would come to call them. They were the outpourings of the lovelorn, the broken-hearted, the seekers of love, the losers of love. They held a certain fascination. We’re all prurient to some degree. Aren’t we?

So I toyed with the idea of creating a fictional blog, using a fictional character who would announce to the world his recent emotional devastation and, thereafter seek a companion for ‘long-term friendship and fun’. I imagined writing that the ‘successful applicant’ would have a GSH (good sense of humour), be NS (non-smoking), have OC (own car), be probably YP (young professional), and be interested in such euphemisms as ‘excitement and adventure’.

Having very little moral sense myself, I was persuaded by my wife that this project was morally suspect and I abandoned it. But the seed of the idea grew and I wondered then about finding a co-conspirator in such a project. If I could pretend to be a lonely divorcee living in a Scottish Highlands glen, I could appeal on a blog for love and my fictional partner in crime could respond. For what purpose? I had no idea other than to simply see where it went, that’s all.

I cast my cyber net around for a partner among the smallish circle of bloggers I moved amongst. There a was an obvious candidate. Why obvious? Because she was a bloody good writer, simple as that. Beyond that fact, and the fact that she was called Amy and lived in the States, I knew nothing at all about her.

I approached her with the idea, with trepidation, by email. Ouch! I could feel the suspicion in her response. I assured her I was no pervert. I sent her jpegs of me and my family, pointed her at my wife’s website, offered to let her communicate with my wife, offered to kill myself there and then… but, no, Amy, was having nothing to do with it. No, no, a thousand times no. And this reaction was, in fact, fascinating in itself. It said much about male/female relations, much about the internet, and much about human nature. It spurred me on. These were issues I wanted to cover in the new blog.

I cast my net wider, but found nobody suitable. I sighed and contemplated leaving the project alone for a while. And meanwhile, the routine inter-blogger contact with Amy continued in desultory fashion.

And then, quite simply, one day, she asked if we could explore the notion again. So we did. And that’s how we came to work together.

Now, to try to recall how we came up with the Waiting For Bloggo concept is not possible. It emerged during long MSN Messenger chats about what project we should undertake. Neither of us had an agenda except for the fact that Amy felt uncomfortable with anything that smacked of romance between the characters. Fair enough… me too! And, ironically, the eventual plot turned out to be a very romantic one (in literary terms) – a relationship which led to marriage, children and ultimate murder and suicide!

So, around and around and around went the conversations until the similarity between what we were doing on Messenger – the discussion about the discussion about the discussion - and what Beckett’s Estragon and Vladimir were doing in Godot seemed blindingly obvious. And the conclusion that we should be doing it on the blog itself followed logically. Thus Waiting For Bloggo was born and, under the circumstances, what could be more apt than to start it with Godot’s first line: “Nothing to be done.”

We were off! But to where? In what direction? We had no idea. I simply wanted to continue discussing the nature of reality/unreality, fact/fiction, truth/untruth in the world of blogs as a metaphor for life. In short: how can we ever know if and when people are telling the truth? Some of the blogs I had read seemed clear fictions, some a clear fictionalisation of everyday events, and some were clearly factual or, at least, offering opinion on the back of facts. But others…. hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm… difficult to tell. I mean, Amy hadn’t even been sure that I was who I said I was and I was damned sure that many bloggers were using pseudonyms even if they were bothering to offer the reader any personal details at all.

A personal note here, methinks: I have a background in sociology, philosophy and political theory. My mind wanders constantly, if I don’t keep it in check, to that side of things. And blogs don’t escape such attention - blogs like american short-timer and The Company Bitch, both of which are mentioned in the storyline and both are tremendously well written. And both are anonymous. I’m full of admiration for both and, in particular for AST. He is a fine writer, but he too is exploring the same ambiguities inherent in this medium. His posts are so well constructed, so ‘literary’ in nature, so crafted, just so damned good that they deserve to be published. But how much is fiction and how much is fact, I have no idea. What I do know is that such blogs are not the outpourings of semi-literate chancers. They take thought and effort and skill… and time. Short-timer and The Company Bitch are both writers, but whether they are published writers or not, who knows! They are writers though by virtue of the simple fact that both of them can and do write great stuff.

This is what AST says on his blog, his blog which portrays him as a soldier in Iraq: I am not in Iraq and I am not currently in the Army and I am not getting my ass shot at. This site is in compliance with MNC-I #9 as per FICI-CE-I, DoD Directive 5230.9 and AR 25-1, etcetera etcetera andsoforth.

Truth? Bluff? Double Bluff? A hugely significant ambiguity put there just to throw the military off the scent? I have no idea. I do know that he has a tremendous sense of fun and I suspect that he must have known exactly what he was doing when he wrote that detail. And, in truth, where he is or what he is or if he is a ‘he’ or a ‘she’ or a civilan or a soldier or a professional writer… none of that matters because what he (let’s call him ‘he’ eh?) writes is startingly good and relevant and deserves nothing but praise. If he is indeed in Iraq, in the front-line, my admiration will be boundless (well, nearly boundless… let’s not go too far!).

As for The Company Bitch, the blogger whose blogging name is Gotcha (how’d you like those potatoes?), this is from a recent post of hers: I am somewhat of a compulsive liar. My lies are rarely pre-meditated, nor do I ever lie about anything truly important. (There aren’t that many truly important things in this world though, so that leaves me a lot to play with).

And this is the point: every body lies. We have no way of knowing who does and who doesn’t in the general course of life… in the general course of bloglife. People say and do things for all sorts of motives, conscious and unconscious, wilful or accidentally. And it’s oh so much easier to lie in the anonymous, instantly accessible, audience-ready and warmed-up, World Of The Blog. Waiting For Bloggo eh?

Blogs are open to analysis from many theoretical directions: existentialism and Freudian theory struck me as particularly relevant, though, especially when the writing began to dictate its own direction (now there’s a philosophical thought too, but you know what I mean by that!). And if it hasn’t struck you yet, david is elizabeth’s unconscious mind. The story is one of elizabeth’s internal conversations, ramblings sometimes, about her life, her relationships and the death of her husband. Bloggo is all about Elizabeth prompting herself to reveal the truth about herself to herself. The character, david, pushes and prompts and drives her to consider the fictions created by david ‘s account of their lives, and then her own account which, until the endgame, is as much fiction as david’s was. But, at the end… at the end… at the end… Bloggo does show up and the existentialist reality for Elizabeth is that she must face up to the consequences of the choices she has made in the past, to the choices she must make once the truth is revealed.

Blogs are many layered, and the fact that our writing was ‘off the cuff’… spontaneous… immediate… here and now… innovative (you will see that I really am david!)… intrigued me. And, as Amy and I were only too aware, especially at the beginning, Charlie could have been lying to Amy and vice versa, just as david could be lying to elizabeth, and as the other David could be lying to the other Elizabeth and vice versa. So, Waiting For Bloggo is, in a very real sense, a metaphor for the truth. Thus, all of us, two real writers, two fictional writers, and several fictional characters were waiting for truth to unfold out of the interplay between… between… between whom? Well, out of the interplay between all of those characters, real and unreal, fact and fiction, true and false. The process was dynamic. The process was revelation. The process was both question and answer… oh, and it was the bit in between, too.

And so, we delved into blog-inspection and blog-introspection, all with associated bookish references to satisfy our own literary inclinations, if truth be told, and no more than that.

But, just as an upturned tumbler on a ouija board will start to make sense of the letters, seemingly of its own volition, we found ourselves being drawn towards, horror of horrors, a plot of sorts. Our characters – david and elizabeth - developed personalities and biographies and likes and dislikes and began to feel strongly towards one another, antipathetically in most part but with an acknowledgement of a shared destiny.

And Bloggo emerged, just like that, on the literary hoof. As we posted, we had no idea how the other would respond and, inevitably, that response pushed the developing storyline off into new directions, off into new dimensions, throwing both of us off balance for a while. Some inconsistencies in written down facts, previously posted, began to emerge, and needed to be explained away. And this very process – the tidying up of fiction, the negotiation of unreality, if you like – drove us in certain directions. And, all the while, the distinction between fiction and fact was blurring. Sure the characters were fictional, but much of their background was and is that of the writers. Sure, the characters’ interchanges were necessary to the blog, but the tone of them, sometimes quite sharp, reflected the real developing relationship between the real writers. And every detail of the ‘plot’ such as it was, was spontaneous. We had to think, there and then, at our keyboards, and that very fact breathed an immediacy into the exchanges, we like to think… breathed life into the characters.

But there came a point at which we had to come up with a loose plot or the whole was going to implode. It would become overly introspective a project, we thought, and wouldn’t hold anybody’s attention.

And what would happen if we wanted to turn it into a book, we thought? And that did it. Once out, that thought could not be put back. We had to have a plot. But even that we developed on the hoof and we altered it and refined it and discarded it at times and only now, as we get towards the end of Bloggo… only now on 18th January, 2006, have we formalised the last six or seven pairs of posts because only now… only now…believe it or not… only now do the two writers know how it is going to end.

This has been a remarkable experience for both of us… a co-operative venture that I, for one, never dreamed possible. It has taught me much about myself, about my own poor writing abilities and about Amy. I am full of admiration for her. She is great writer – but doesn’t yet know it or accept it - and she will get even better after this, I’m sure. Never published before – what a sin – this Bloggo thing would simply not have been possible without her talent. And without her

Only two others knew the nature of Bloggo. My wife, Nicki, aka The Sensible One, has been privy to most of the negotiations and twists and turns and has offered her advice and observations when asked, for which, as ever, I am more than grateful The other was a fellow blogger whose blushes I will spare by not mentioning her name other than to say thank you. And even she didn’t know who elizabeth was or how the story would unfold.

My one disappointment, if I can put it that way, is the scarcity of comments from readers – and we know that there was a hard core of regular readers following Bloggo. One of them said, early on, that she didn’t feel that she should ‘interfere’ in what seemed to he an essentially private dialogue… and I can see why she would think that. I can see why others would think that too. It became, quite simply, an unusual blog, a unique blog, and not one given to the usual sort of comment. It confused us all. I’m still confused by it!

It became, in many ways, more of a straightforward work of literary fiction than I ever anticipated when we first started – an unusual one in some respects, that’s true, and also using a new medium in an unusual way, but literary fiction nonetheless. In hindsight, it was inevitable.

My next one will be different though!

The reader will have to forgive Bloggo’s rough edges, occasional inconsistencies and some repetitiveness. We haven’t re-read the whole thing yet ourselves so we’re going to go over the work and edit those things out, hopefully to create a more polished finished article without losing any of the spontaneity, hopefully.

Charlie
http://www.highland-dreams.blogspot.com/

You can find Amy at
http://www.divinerealities.blogspot.com/