Your Own You

Whatever one's role in life is, we all have our own particular style, our own particular character.

Jim Capaldi
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Hello Rose
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There is always a narrative involved, always a story. Whether it is a painting, a sculpture, a symphony, a song, a novel, a legal document, an essay in a scientific journal. a play or a life, there is always a story involved.

Some people tend to tell their life stories, in bits and pieces, by writing it out in their blogs. I had a conversation today with someone who mentioned a man she knew who said that he thought a second person, disinterested or not, should edit our blogs. Well, I thought, that might not be a bad idea if you are unsure of things like spelling and grammar. But if someone takes it upon themselves to be editor and critic of my blog I'm going to say "Mind your own business."

I enjoy reading other people's blogs because they are all different. Every one has a style and purpose of it's own. The character and personality of the blogger makes it what it is, and any editor should take that into consideration if they are called upon to read and make corrections or suggest changes.

The world is full of critics. Everyone, it seems, is a critic. Some people actually make a living as critics. Most of them, alas, do more harm than good. New York City critics are infamous for destroying a perfectly good show or gallery exhibit by doing nothing more than expressing an opinion. The artists, hopefully, will survive it, many don't. But the critic will generally be forgotten. The composer Jean Sibelius put it succinctly when he wrote "There has never been set up a statue in honor of a critic."

Critics love to analyze artists. 99.99% of the time they don't really know what they are seeing or hearing. Actors are particularly vulnerable to that kind of misplaced energy because it is the actor's own person that is the canvas, the musical instrument that is being played. The actor is the one upon whom the story is being told. And a good actor never forgets that. His first obligation as an artist is to tell the story.

Those who observe and comment on actors come in three types: those who are helpful, those who are abusive and those who seem satisfied. The helpful ones are those who can make good suggestions because they can recognize what the actor is doing and how to enhance it. Those who are abusive are usually the most ignorant ones.

I ran into one of those idiots in a directing class at a major New York City film school. I played a scene for the class and after it he immediately began tearing apart what I was doing. It was a directing class but he was trying to teach me acting. I had been an actor for many years.

What he couldn't understand was that as an actor I had made a choice and was acting on that choice (and doing it well, let me humbly add). If he didn't like the choice then as a director he could ask for a different choice or suggest one. I had worked with many good directors in my day. That man was not one of them. I pitied the kids in the class. He wasn't teaching them to properly direct a scene. He was teaching them how to abuse actors.

No two actors will play a scene the same way. The important thing is to get the story told. I can't live your life, and you can't live mine. We both have our stories, and how we tell them is what makes us unique in personality, character and style. That uniqueness should be respected, and not abused.

DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never give up.
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HEAR YE, HEAR YE
With the holidays coming up I'm going to risk it all and ask for some guest bloggers to enter my journal with special thoughts on the holidays. So be thinking about it. Beginning tomorrow I'll state the specifics. Admission is free. All are welcome.
DB
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For Now

If you love someone, set them free. If they come back they're yours, if they don't, they never were.

Richard Bach
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I'm pleased that four of my blogger buddies returned and set up a correspondence with me: Ally, Geo, Ken and Mark. The ever friendly Arlene is writing also. So, now I have four blogs to read and some emails to answer.

Setting people free is a double action. The initial thrust was to free myself from a heavy burden of obligation, the duty of reading and responding to blogs of people who rarely write or have written only once. I accomplished that, allowing for anyone who wanted to from that group to get back in touch with me. The other action was to free those who don't care that much to be read by me or to get comments from me. That action seems to have been accomplished with grand strides as my blogger list has gone from 89 to 4.

Over the years, since 2008, when I first established Vagabond Journeys, I've felt very close to some people on a friendship basis. It's a sad thing if I have to lose some of those friendships. But life turns and people change. Love never comes with guarantees.

I can't name the names of people I miss today, there are too many of them. To say I wish them all well is also a nameless wish therefore. To issue a blanket "fare thee well" to everyone who has ever been in my life may satisfy some selfish itch but does little for the real welfare of those people. But to hold them in my thoughts as ones who affected me in positive ways, to hold the momentos of our friendly relationships as sacred artifacts in my life and to never forget them is the best wish I can give to people.

To the gone but not forgotten I say "Stop by again some day. You are always welcome."

DB - The Vagabond
Never give up.
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Summer Is A Comin' In
SPRING QUESTION
(This is not a contest)

Come on. 11 diverse and interesting answers so far. Where's yours?

NASA has planned to send a two man mission on an 18 month trip to the planet Mars. It would take 6 months for the astronauts to get there and after 6 months of exploration another 6 months to return.

Should they do it and why, and if not, why not?

dbdacoba@aol.com

I eagerly await your answer.

DB
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I Tried

True wisdom lies in gathering the precious things out of each day as it passes by.

B. S. Bouton
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Well, I tried. I set aside the day to read and respond to all the blogs on my list. I started in the morning, by late afternoon I had quit the scene. It's an utter useless waste of time, a futility.

In almost every case after I've written a comment I have to log in to Google and then do it again. If the comment is accepted by Google I'm lucky. In most cases it was not accepted and I had to go to an email address, if I had one, which I usually didn't, to leave the comment. I wrote a very nice comment to the essay by Thought Bubble Ten and Google simply deleted it. The frustration level has gone beyond the acceptable point.

What happened? It used to be so simple and enjoyable keeping in touch with people. I didn't mind if I read about their gardens or their grandchildren or their pets. Google has made it impossible. I never even got close to the blogs of people I hear from all the time, my regular friends.

Everything began to fall apart when Jland went down. Now we have Facebook with it's one liners, Twitter with it's limited abilities. And I have to log in to those whenever I open one of them up to read or write. And if I leave an entry on Facebook I have to decipher their stupid code words first.

It's as if these systems are designed to discourage me and cut me out. Does anyone else feel that way?

So here's what I'm going to do, my defense. I'm going to delete my entire list of blog users, all 89 of them, and from now on include on my list only those people who write to me. And if I have emails, and if Google won't let me leave comments on your blog, you'll hear from me by mail. This won't affect my regular email buddies.

What a blessed relief it will be. It's all part of spring cleaning, I guess.

DB
__________________
Never give up.
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SPRING QUESTION
(This is not a contest)

Come on. 11 diverse and interesting answers so far. Where's yours?

NASA has planned to send a two man mission on an 18 month trip to the planet Mars. It would take 6 months for the astronauts to get there and after 6 months of exploration another 6 months to return.

Should they do it and why, and if not, why not?

dbdacoba@aol.com

I eagerly await your answer.

DB
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Get Out Your Handkerchiefs

A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.

Herman Melville
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Maybe that's my problem. Have I grown too comfortable with myself?

I have written an essay in this journal everyday since 2004, except for the six weeks I spent with the phone against my ear listening to scratchy disco music followed by silly instructions from even sillier tech support people, crawling around on the floor unplugging and re plugging Ethernet cables in a vain attempt to get back on the Internet. When it was finally determined that the problem was with the computer itself some kind people got together and got me a new one so I could keep on supplying the great googleland with my thoughts and words.

What's happened? I genuinely love and appreciate the few who still read my rambling reads. But I have lost so many readers over the past year that I feel I must be doing something wrong. It can't just be "Let 'em eat facebook." I've tried pinging my entries. I've tried registering with this and that. But when I end a day with one comment and only 7 hits on the entry, as happened the other day, when I used to get between 35 and 50, I know something is wrong.

An independent publisher likes my entry of the 17th well enough to republish it. Where is everybody else? Have I become too maudlin, inane, humorless, uninteresting or sophomoric? Whats a mattah ya don like my pitchah?

Ah, I know what you're saying "He's whining again." No I'm not, I'm asking. What do people want to read? I don't have a garden to weed or a lawn to mow. I have no grandchildren to brag about or pets to take cute pictures of. I don't want to write about my physical condition, that got me into trouble before. Have mercy on me. I am bereft. Left with nothing but my imagination and 7 decades of life experience. I will write what people want to read, whatever it is.

I don't know how to specialize. I don't have enough recipes, I'm not interested in sports and there are only so many theatre stories I can tell before I bore myself into oblivion. So what do I do? Puzzles?

Cryptograms are hard work and no one does them except Bill, who rips them off before his first cup of coffee. Otherwise my puzzles and seasonal questions have become some of the most unpopular things on the web.

I really, truly am searching for a whole new approach to my writing because I enjoy writing and I enjoy writing to people.

I read through all the blogs on my blog list today and on some of them I left the 15th, 30th or 80th comment. At 11:25 p.m. on my blog I have 11 visits and 2 comments. See what I mean? I am grateful; for those comments. I am. Thank you Rose. Thank you Ma.

Maybe I'll do what some people do, knock off for a while, forget about it, spend the rest of the year just painting pictures and writing stories. Change my name and start a new journal about something as yet unknown.

Help.

DB - The Vagabond