As so often this time of the year, I have prepared a New Year's compilation for some widespread distribution among friends and acquaintances.
A case of you - Joni Mitchell
I want to thank Stephen because his own compilation made me overcome my lazyness and actually record and post the list I had readied some time earlier.
As I have already mentioned, these wide circulation compilations, unlike a personal one, tell only about the compiler and even if trying to make a more accesible or acceptable selection, you have to accept than getting two pieces added to a receiver's musical landscape is already a triumph. With that in mind, and considering the chronological spread of this year's selection, I will be satisfied with people already owning 2 of the tracks.
The main musical influence this year has come from my own build-up of a digital music library. For many reasons I just cannot rip all the music I own. No, deciding what goes into the library is a time consuming process, requiring that I listen to the whole album, often several times, and then pick what I feel is worth of isolated listening. That means that there are albums that I like a lot that are not represented, just because it is the whole rather than the parts what I enjoy. And albums I hate that get one or two pieces in (which are usually the reason I got the album in the first place).
In this revisionist mood I have to confess I have not much enjoyed most of the new music I have got this year, competing as they were against the whole weight of my solidified preferences. But some did get approval, even if they cannot compete with songs that got imprinted in my mind when first kissing a girl or patching up my first broken heart. A few of those however have lost their place too, as I do not really remember that heartache anyway.
In what used to be my most frequented forum (now replaced by a playtesting one), I made for 2006 the determination to end up all my alternate alias and personalities. At the time, one year ago, I expected it would be just my "main" persona who would remain, and the others would wither and die, or even be exposed in different ways to make sure I would not use them. However, though I assumed it less than usual, I could not bring myself to kill or expose the main "alternate" persona.
I have already discussed a bit on the dynamics that make that an internet persona is not me, just certain parts that I wish to highlight. At the same time, it is me, at least in part, as some aspects of myself are reflected in it, even when taking a false role. The main alternate was helped by the conscious decision not to openly dissemble with it, so it has been growing closer to me, rather than drifting slowly away as most fake roles tend to do.
If I had remained highly involved in the forum, I think I would just had kept being myself. However the "myself" that appeared in the forum would have stayed highly involved, just by his own wordiness, nosyness and wide areas of interest. So as my interest in the forum waned and time constraints began to make themselves felt, I could not just keep that persona believable to myself. I could have changed it, as internet personas are nothing if not flexible and malleable, but I took the easier way of falling back on the alternate, who was still a creature of wide interests but who manifested them seldom. Prone to bouts of disappeareances and cryptic posts, both fitting my changed interaction with the forum better. And it felt perfectly at home because most people that mattered knew it was me under the mask, so I could still exchange inside jokes and references.
Other things had to change as well. As my main persona was polite and helpful, the alternate concentrated anger and aggresiveness. Now that it has become the main, it cannot be always angry, even if I am still more aggressive when writing under its mask than normally, such as in other fora where my old main still lives on. Some habits are hard to break.
So as less of my interest lies on that forum, less of my own personality remain on it, falling back on an artificial construct because, to be fair, it is less work to have many stock reactions than behaving like a real, complex human being.
Others doing the same (become a caricature rather than themselves) was one of the things that turned me off mailing lists long ago. Maybe I am wiser now, or I care less. ¶ 8:39 PM 0 comments
