March

Every now and then, in a newspaper comic strip, the characters in the comic will notice, acknowledge, or otherwise deal with the fact that they ARE characters in a newspaper comic strip. They might climb up the frame at the edge of a panel, gaze across at some other comic strip, or simply make a comment acknowledging the fact that they are comic strip characters drawn by someone else, with no independent existence. A week or two ago, Beetle Bailey addressed complaints about his lines directly to "Mort", the writer of the comic strip. (I realize that I am making these statements as though the characters DID have some sort of independent existence or at least free will. Bear with me.) I generally enjoy this phenomenon.

I am unaware of any character in a book ever expressing awareness that they are simply characters in a book, but I suppose it has happened. There have definitely been cases of TV and movie characters expressing awareness of their setting, and sometimes interacting with or even attempting to break free. (Again, I am writing as if the characters existed outside of the writers, directors, actors and whatever, but I am still leading to a point.)

There is a relationship between form and content that we often strive or desire to keep hidden. A well-done book or television show or movie (or perhaps even comic strip) can make someone feel that it is real, and they are experiencing the experiences themselves, rather than merely reading or viewing something. Other times, such as when comic strip characters become aware of their surroundings on the newspaper page, the results can be quite interesting, amusing, or enjoyable.

Much of my personal artistic experience has been as an instrumental musician. Often, musicians must do their best to ignore the setting, and what may be going on around them, and focus on the music. Other times, interacting with the listeners may be a very important component of the performance.

This all leads me to the subject of this still-evolving blog. Up to this point, this blog has not been intended to be a journal of my day-to-day existence. In fact, most of the entries so far have been totally unrelated to day-to-day activities, concentrating instead on general ideas. I also have tried not to pay much attention to the fact that this IS a "blog". For that matter, a major purpose of this blog so far is for ME to better understand the entire concept of "blogging". Incidentally, at some point I will probably have to deal with the fact that since I do not tell anyone about this blog, nor post anything about it anywhere, I suspect it gets very, very few visitors -- though as far as I can tell, there has been ONE legitimate "comment", from a REAL person. For now, I am fine with the lack of blog traffic (though since I am already talking about comic strips, I must admit that over the past few weeks I have noticed that Jon in "Garfield" has been writing a blog, and a big part of the joke is that no one reads it).

So here I am, like Beetle Bailey, admitting that I am aware that this IS a blog rather than just a collection of ideas, AND realizing that the blog is not totally isolated from my real life. Specifically, I realize that I have not posted much yet in 2010, and not AT ALL during the month of March 2010. There is a complicated mix of reasons for the lack of posting, including things as simple as computer problems. Most of the other reasons result in a general lack of time. Though the time situation is still pretty bad, I am going to try to get back to posting more regularly -- at least once a week.

Notice how I am writing this as if someone is actually going to be READING it? Truth is complicated.