The nature of blogging

I thought one interesting application of this blog might be to see how easy it is to form a sort of detached version of myself on the Net. I have a lot of stuff online here & there, and it's not hard to find connections to me wherever. This blog could be a stand-alone entity, with no connections whatsoever to my normal existence, and it might be interesting to see what sort of social interaction forms around this disconnected-me, or if it becomes an inevitable trail of obvious clues that point to me.

But that also would limit what I could talk about on the blog. For example, I just set up a Furl account, and I was going to link to it from here - but then there it is, that same default name I use online, and it would be a connection to my regular online self. Does it matter? Well, no, not particularily, but it would defeat the purpose of the experiment if I did decide to make this blog an isolated event.

Huh, the sun just came out. I certainly wasn't expecting that.

Here's a thought about the vastness of the net. Before we had the internet, if you had a good original idea, you could play with it and coax it and build on it and think about where it could go. Now, when you have a good original idea, you can do a search for it on Google and immediately discover that six other people have already thought of it, produced it, and are capitalizing on it. Upon discovering this, you become disheartened and lose interest in your perfectly good idea. Or maybe it's just me.

Yesterday I figured out how to hook up & record my bass guitar through a Roland UA-30 to my G5 using GarageBand. It is sweeeeeeet. I feel a world of potential at my fingertips, etc. Of course, I also was browsing some old MP3s and found some songs I recorded of myself singing, accompanied by some weak attempts at keyboard. They made me very self-conscious and completely uncertain of any musical talent I may possess. I think this is why I play bass: it's an instrument that provides support rather than standing in the spotlight. I'm too self-deprecating to be a lead singer, however much I may dream about it. God, I would hate to be one of those amateur rock singers who thinks they sound really great while the audience
knows better. It's often a good thing to have confidence and all, but there are some people out there performing who should perhaps have a little less confidence than they do. (Do I even have to mention those American Idol auditions they show?)

But, um, to end on a positive note, I was really really really happy to start playing with music and my computer and I can't wait to get into it even more. There.