Song of Myself: Blogging & the Art of Self Construction

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
—Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

In spite of its public nature, the blog represents an essentially solitary act. This act, however, is a deeply meaningful one for the blogger. Like all creative acts, it is not only an expression of its maker, but is an act of self-making. The blog does not merely help the blogger clarify to himself his thoughts and passions; it is an instrument of personal construction. In the blog the blogger cobbles himself together, sometimes carefully, sometimes haphazardly, then releases the self of his own fashioning to the world.

The sound of the belch’d words of my voice loos’d to the eddies of
the wind

As I’ve touched upon before, the blog’s audience is more excuse than purpose. With a few notable exceptions, most blogs are lost in the mad proliferations of cyberspace, even the most brilliant lucky to be discovered at all. Readership, though always a wish, is a pitiful dream to build a blog on.

I believe in you my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you,
And you must not be abased to the other.

But the soul, formless and void, seeks an image of itself. With empty hands it scoops the incoherent clay and, brick by brick, builds a babbling tower upon the blank digital plain. Clay it remains, but the soul willingly recognizes itself in the verticality. It is artifice, but it is the soul’s own.

I resist any thing better than my own diversity

Facebook and MySpace mantras notwithstanding, the blog is not about community. Each blog is a stiletto of identity. The blogger’s motivation is not really to participate as one among many; the blogger always seeks to distinguish himself, to set himself apart from the many. He wishes to become, in nearly any way he can (linking, search engine tricks, etc.) the blogger, the big fish—even if he has to shrink the sea of his pretensions to a puddle.

This hour I tell things in confidence,
I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you.

PostSecret is a metaphor for the profound paradox of blogging, indeed, for much of the internet as a whole. The blog is the relentless confession uttered from the safety of anonymity. On one side of the curtain is the priest, the vast web constitutionally sworn to the sanctity of secrets; on the curtain’s other side is the neo-penitent, brazen in sin, bold in regret, audacious in self-knowledge, whose prayer is not for forgiveness but for personhood. The rest of us are the blogger’s means of grace.

I do not ask who you are, that is not important to me,
You can do nothing and be nothing but what I will infold you.

And yet, except as the ornaments of his own affirmation, the blogger cares nothing for us. The blog is a construction of the self, by the self, for the self. The blog is both a self making and a self contemplation. The blog is posted to the public domain as a way of objectifying the self. Like God who preceded him, the blogger creates an other out of himself in order to reveal himself to himself. The blog is from him and through him and to him; the blog is all things.

I know perfectly well my own egotism,
Know my omnivorous lines and must not write any less

All this is known to the blogger. In fact, the best writers are filled with the spirit of the self. It is in self-revelation that the blogger discovers his unique voice; it is in self construction that he finds the path to the self’s salvation. The blogger is compelled to extricate himself from the hellish abyss of homogeneity, and so he blogs his way to deliverance, knowing that there is no such thing as saved; there is only the saving.

There is that in me—I do not know what it is—but I know it is in me.

Ultimately, however, even the most insightful, articulate blogger cannot plumb the obscure depths of self. Out of the materials at hand he fashions an image then sets it up. He knows it is merely an idol, yet he also believes that the self somehow assumes it. The self is not only the blog, but the blog is indeed the self. The self’s inexhaustible mystery means that the blogger is never finished building (though he abandon the task). Each post is a fix, a short-lived relief that is the seed of identity’s discontent.

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable

Post by post by post by post the blogger constructs himself. Each published entry redeems the self from the primal chaos of non-being, of disregard. The blog doesn’t explain anything, any more than does a kiss or a bruise. But it is the center of the self’s polis. It is the temple from which I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

 

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