Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Bloggers Make Me Sick

I've been thinkin a lot lately about this blog thing. I've figured out that I am not a "blogger." What I mean by this is not that I don't think I can be good at writing cute things for everyone to read. I can do that.

What I do mean is a little complicated and as usual with me there is a story to tell. Around about 1999 I was really well known for my writing of poetry which I would read at Speakfire and other open mics round about Atlanta. Then I stopped. In a moment of disgust I realized that I could not, while maintaining respect for myself and the medium (poetry) in general, continue to participate in the over-exposed, comercialized forum of "open mics." My biggest concern was aggravated when people started accusing me of being a "spoken word artist."

I hate spoken word. Why? Because I noticed that every black girl with seemingly no clue about the English language nor an iota of capacity as a writer or a poet had taken up pen and pad and started to call themselves "spoken word artist." I decided that the movie Love Jones was mostly to blame and wrote off the form completely. I have not looked back. I could not bare to hear another black girl talk about the flowing rivers of honey between her thighs! Even more I grew to anticipate with great trepidation the angry fuck-it-all, what-do-you-mean-I-need-therapy-?- "poetry. "Nor could I stomach the brother-man-bravado speak about the prowess of his penis delivered in the trite sing-song pseudo rhyme of Tigra and Bunny. Don't get me wrong, I like the cars that go boom too! But I would never sit idly while Tigra and Bunny defined what they do as poetry. I could abide less the insistence by the queues of college freshman, scorned men and women, and self proclaimed love doctors, that they too are poets.

Thus I have begun referring to "spoken word" as "chittlin circuit poetry." I, subsequently avoid open mics and other spoken word venues like the proverbial plague.

This brings me to Blogging. I discovered it a little late and decided that it would be a great low pressure way for me to deliver some of my ideas into cyberspace. I did not care who read my blog and thus blogged like I did not care. Anything that was on my mind became the topics of my blog post.

I found that I was doing it wrong. You see, what I have discovered is that there is a predetermined model of Blogging for Black gay men. The essential components are as follows:

-A super-model aspiring Black fag

-Glamour shots of myself to post on the face of my blog

-Glamour shots of myself to ad to every new post

-An adequate suply of "artistic nudes" of myself for every other post

-A huge predisposition toward self promotion

-A heavily celebrated but mediocre writing ability

-At least 60 black educated butch-queens who profess to want to mentor me that secretly actually are hoping to bed me once I have become to myself, like them, undesirable because of age and body image issues.

I and my blogging have been found lacking. I have thus ignored my blogg with the same disdain that I have ignored spoken word.

What I believe about both is that they have become the forms of people with underdeveloped social skills who are unable to act out their dating dance in realtime and the real world and thus result to the passive pandering of their own sexuality through spoken word and blogging.

What do you think? I'm interested in hearing from bloggers. Particularly those who have wallpapered their bloggs with glamour shots and "artistic nudes."