Confessional Blogs

Have you ever found yourself discussing celebrities quoted (as Mel Gibson was) saying offensive or silly things and thought, My God, if everything I said was recorded and held up for public scrutiny I'd look like the biggest racist, sexist, lying, pyschotic hypocrite in the world?

Then don't write a confessional blog, children (perhaps you've reached that wise conclusion without me.)

Someone said a poem is a graph of the mind moving. So's a confessional blog. The problem is that every movement of your mind is recorded, however stupid it might be, however much you might pass through that to a position that contradicts it completely.

Which is the same progression made by everybody's mind. But for most people the twists and turns and little nuances of each transformation are lost. All they are left with is the overarching memory of an event based on whatever mental orientation they have at the moment they consider it.

That's a much more comfortable position to be in, boys, I can tell you.

Of course, even portraying yourself as a complete fool doesn't matter when your relationship with the reader is the usual anonymous one. But when you're standing face to face with somebody and they're quoting your own words back at you--and you are just as aware as they are of how ridiculous the words sound--it's a different matter. The embarrassment, though you may deserve to suffer some embarrassment, is extraordinary. As is the defensive irritation you experience because they are able, with the obscuration of distance, to portray themselves in a much better light.

The writer of confessional blogs throws his clothes into the lake and stands naked in the daylight like a fool.