interpretation, inference & expression

i live in an old house. its a good house. i love the house, but it *acts* like an old house.

if you put a marble down on any wooden floor, it rolls. certain steps creak and in the morning, you have to step past the bathroom sink, because there's a squeak in the floor that could wake up a light sleeper right in front of the sink.

But I really love our house. Especially in the winter; it feels like an extension of my body -- bringing me warmth and shelter...

Sometimes, when Jaelyn or Addison jumps off the bed upstairs and the walls and the ceiling resonate with this big boom, I feel like -- wow. this house has survived a lot of jumping bumping jarring etc... (built in 1923...) And sometimes I think: does there come a point where an old house reaches that point where things just start to slip apart instead of settle together?

And these questions feel directly related to this other thing i've been thinking about.

...

i was surfing blogs the other day and i ran into a:

post

that fascinated me...

i read this blog occassionally. i happened upon it because its title -- rear view window seemed like an allusion to my main man:

Marshall McLuhan

& because its writers *seem to* share my last name (not sure of that), and because they're writing about social justice issues from a sort of post-evangelical perspective...

but this was the bit that fascinated me.

While surfing the nets this morning i realized than many bloggers (namely i-want-to-be-cool-and-emerging-altenative-christian bloggers) have several links to other i-want-to-be-cool-and-emerging-altenative-christian bloggers that they have never met or had any kind of ongoing conversation with. "Who's got the biggest penis" has become "who's got the most cool personalities on their blogroll".

[please note: i am in no way trying to offend anyone here]

Over the last year our blogroll has grown (with more to add). But these are people we actually know -- in person ... face to face. Hell, some of them are cool. Many of them aren't (once again, no offense intended). There are two exceptions of people we haven't actually met, to which i now feel i should remove from our list for consistency's sake (we still love you, though).

i thought about it during grading week -- and i was thinking about blogging about it then, but chose to stick to grading instead -- but *isn't* it fascinating.

It seems like so many sociological things are going on in this post. Here are the two that fascinated me the most...

1.) blogrolling becomes a symbol with a particular meaning. i mean this is probably not a hugely surprising thing -- that people attribute meanings to actions -- but i still find it fascinating. Because the obvious move when reading a blogroll is to attribute meaning/motivation to the particular blogs that are noted. which *does* happen in this post, i'll get to that in a moment though. the less obvious move is to assume that the technical dimensions of the blog signify an intentional move on the part of the blogger.

blogrolls -- the list of blogs to the right of the text -- seem to be a really normal part of blogging. everybody has some. it just wouldn't be a blog without them. so on some level, you wouldn't even think of having a blog that didn't have ANY links to the side. OR if you did have such a blog (many starting bloggers) you'd be AWARE that *sometime* you needed to add those links.

Those of you who have read my blog over the past while have noticed how i have framed and reframed my blogroll. ok, maybe you haven't, maybe you aren't as DEEPLY involved in the nuances of my expressive behaviour as i presume you to be...but the truth is...i've retitled my blogroll about three times....

because i feel keenly aware that there's this indeterminacy of meaning that still surrounds the medium of blogging. once my brother ripped on me because i title my posts. so yeah, he's write. why title? its not neccessarily a given generic convention. you don't HAVE TO have titles for posts. So why do it?

Because I'm holding on to a generic convention from the olden days when books and chapters had titles.

Which performs a whole bunch of interesting realities about blogging for me. I think that it signifies that you're not reading a personal letter, or a diary, or a journal, that on *some* level there is a FOCUS or a theme or a spine to my entries (though, i am perfectly aware, these centres may not always be completely obvious to all readers), it announces that the tone of my writing is more formal -- not formal as in stuffy, but formal as in conventionally oriented toward a generalized audience.

But I'm not the only one holding on to generic conventions. We all are. We all do. It's all we CAN do. Genres are (excuse the diversion into class lingo, former students,) social contracts -- agreements about the codes we're co-participating in.

So when we get to a phenomenon like blogrolling, to which genre do we refer?

what other texts get shaped by quick associative links?

i immediately think of bumper stickers and sewn on patches on clothes...of course in the blog (above), Joshua refers to a party where people are namedropping -- a form of social discourse that I'm *really* turned off by too -- instead of talking.

But if you read the comments that follow Joshua's rant -- you'll see that people have all kind of differing motivations for blogrolling -- some seem to be a little bit poseur motivations -- others seem really legitimate and important...

During the initial introduction of any new technology -- there are all kind of chaotic, liminal, experimental responses. People play with social conventions -- trying to find new ways of communicating which allow them the same degree of freedom to be themselves and balance that freedom (at some level) with the needs of the group with which they're using the technology.

To me blogging and blogrolling seems particularly surprising and fascinating though, because so many diverse groups of people from so many different *places* (literally and figuratively) are co-active in trying to shape and constrain meaning...in the process -- people are deeply protective of things they love -- that reflect values that they have nurtured, and profoundly attuned to the practices that potentially erode those values, those practices, that possibility.

In the case of this blog -- RELATING is a value that gets protected over POSING -- but the unfortunate (& unanticipated?) consequence of this distinction is that really clear BOUNDARIES emerge. Such and such is ingroup behaviour. Violations of ingroup behaviour are, officially now, outgroup behaviour.

Its such a normal process for ingroups and outgroups to get defined by the interpretations of behaviour...but its always disappointing if you're not in the ingroup.

But in a sense this process -- the process by which people gain legitimacy and groups retain their boundaries / definitions -- is like the SETTLING process in my house. If it weren't for the bumping, jarring & jumping in my house -- the house COULDN'T settle. It couldn't be solid. And the solidity of ANY group is dependent upon *both* the density and fixity of connection between the group members *and* upon the forces which work against the solidarity of the group, therefore solidifying the connection of it...

sociological insight two -- which will be (post)poned deals with the substance of those connections -- words & symbols -- hope & decay...

but i've gotta do some "real" work -- stuff that supports a "real" institution -- and the "real" discourse that makes that "real" institution have the capacity to pay me in "real" wealth.

a note to the (unbelievably tenacious) reader who is still reading...i'm address bookless right now. Just moved to a new machine, and am hoping that all my old emails and old addresses are en route. There are some of you who i can't wait to respond to.... (others, outgrouppers? my old emails and old addresses must have gotten "lost in the mail...")