starting a blog

i've been thinking a lot about how the internet has changed since i felt more like i enjoyed my time on the internet. blogs specifically were great spaces, and there's nothing new to be said about them in general terms.

my best personal relationship with blogs was centered on blogs that focused on sharing/cataloguing/archiving music. there were a lot of great blogs dedicated to completing digital discographies for generally unknown bands, based on genre, region, etc.

i recently thought about music i used to listen to all the time, especially during the summer i worked the closing shift at a bagel/coffee place / bar in ithaca ny near the cornell campus. i would listen to Henry's Dress on my earbuds while sweeping the patio and walking down the hill at like 2am. i got all the henry's dress music, including a bootleg taping from a live radio station performance, from the burnt toast blog. the guy was passionate about them and completing the discography and, importantly, sharing download links. looking through my old computers, i couldn't find the mp3s anymore. all gone. no idea where to. so i looked up the blog and bam, still there. a post from 2009 with some mediafire links that still worked. and now i have the music again. it's incredible.

the burnt toast blog also featured his exploits buying records off of ebay, and he'd post weird drawings. it was earnest and exciting. and there were a million other blogs like it. for the indie lit kids, tao lin and the other alt lit squad obviously lived and died on blogs. the twitter-only life is desolate compared to these old days. the idea of spending time in a space, curated by a person, dedicated to their ideas and art and passions, is appealing. and now tao lin is blogging again, and i've enjoyed his post about writing for magazines (and getting paid for it). that was engaging. i want more content like that and i want to make content like that.

this won't be like burnt toast or tao's blog. i don't' know what it will be. but i want to experiment with spending less time on twitter and more time creating and consuming longer-form content on blogs. i think i'll post writing and thoughts on writing and books mostly. we'll see. ok. thanks.