Wish the bunny a happy one, will you?

Today, July 8, 2007, marks the year anniversary of my first post on this little blog. I began it without a whole lot of direction, but with the kernel of an idea, which had been conceived during one ride or another, in Jon's dinged-up green Altima, somewhere along the stretch of Franklin Road between where it becomes 8th Avenue and where it intersects with Old Hickory Boulevard. I know that it happened there because, in the nearly three years I lived in Nashville since finishing grad school, I probably traveled the distance between my parents' house and Jon's apartment more than any other stretch in town. And usually, Jon and I were having some ridiculously vociferous argument over whatever film we'd just seen. And so, we cooked up this (rabbit-furred) idea that if we wrote out our differing takes on any given film and presented them as essayistic pairings, well, maybe we wouldn't threaten to not be friends with each other so often. But we never did do it

Eventually, I got sick of talking about how great an idea this was and took matters into my own hands, deciding to start my own little blog of movie musings... and Jon could comment when and if he wanted. So there.

For the record, starting a blog to save a friendship is a rather hare-brained(god, I am SO FUNNY!) idea. As it turns out.. Jon and I? Well, we're just arguers. Nay, tooth-and-nail brawlers, really. I feel pretty confident in offering a smidge of wisdom here: blogs don't fix relationships. It's an awfully good thing that Jon and I actually, you know, like each other. Really, we do! I swear it. 'Cuz, seriously! We'll argue about the color of blood!


But anyway, shortly after I began this blog, I got a job and moved to DC... and lost Jon as my faithful bi-weekly movie-going date. Dammit all. That part of moving sucked. The silver lining here, though, is that we were now able to avoid the pre-movie argument about which movie we should go see... and how I always got to pick the movie... and how he'd entertain my movie-going whims... but when he wanted to see, oh, I don't know, let's just say it might have been that Tom Cruise War of the Worlds puddle of exploitative puke, I was dismissive and snobby and an awful person. OK, so, fine. I'm dismissive and snobby and probably an awful person, too. I'll own that. But now? When I go to the video rental store, I get to rent all the artsy soft porn I want!!!! And so, that's how the focus of my blog got just a little narrower.

Since then, this blog has become such a receptacle for me. Recently, one of my readers asked me how I find the time, given all the usual responsibilities and obligations that accompany being (or trying to be) a grown-up (having a job, having friends, having to feed oneself, having to put oneself to bed, etc...). I answered that, pretty much, this blog is the only thing in my life that I REALLY get excited about. It's a venue for a regular interaction with language and writerly practice. It's a venue for discussion of an art form that I love--film. But most importantly, it's a venue for me to think through contemporary American life and my own particular obsessions through this lens of film discussion. It's a perfect forum for me to marry my assorted fixations to the practice of detachment that comes with critical writing (ok, so, I'm still working on that second part).

And I suppose it's a beacon. I know I'm very consciously shaping my own blogger identity here. For those who read and don't know me very well, this persona that I project here is warty for sure, but have no doubt that I've carefully selected the warts you get to see. In the way that I conceive of the human body as nothing but a big node, designed for the purpose of sending and receiving information (this is why we speak to each other and why we listen; this is what pheromones do; this is why we touch each other and have eye contact and wear certain clothes and walk a certain way; this is what a body IS!), I suppose my blog is just one more way I keep sending up flags.

I'm not entirely sure what sort of responses I'm hoping to receive in return. The deeper my engagement with this writing becomes, the more I find myself burrowing into some weird stuff. Do you know how dogs get those things called hotspots? They're little infections on the surface of the skin... the dog will get a bug bite or some fur will get matted and it'll itch and so he'll chew the spot until he eats all the hair off and it becomes red and bloody and all he can think about is chewing on it some more. This is how my obsessions work, too, I think. Some little arbitrarily imposed social rule will prick at my skin and pretty soon, I'll have worked myself into a lather over it. And because we seem to have so goddamn MANY rules about sex and the social order, it's quite obvious that all things transgressively sexual have become such intense hotspots that no quantity of hydro cortisone on Earth can quiet them down. Am I looking for respondees, or silent readers, even, who buy my arguments and are similarly troubled? Or would I rather have people who would take me to task? A healthy mixture of the two would be nice, I think. But I do know that I want to be talking to more than just myself. That's important. Audience, I mean.

And that's what writing poetry never gave me. Because my poetry was obscured and prettified and sounded like the inside of my head and therefore spoke more to me than to anyone else.

So, I wanted this post to be the mission statement that I couldn't write a year ago. I want to have figured out exactly what my project really is. But it seems I still can't. I know it won't prevent me from fighting with Jon. I know it's often about movies, but not all the time. I know that it's often about social issues that bug me, but not all the time. I know that it's USUALLY about sex and I'm quite pleased about that. I intend for it only to get dirtier (please note the blog-rating button I added to the bottom-- yep, according to Mingle2, my blog contains enough profane language to merit an NC-17. Holy hell, I'm so proud!).

I intend for it to be an outlet for my fixations but in such a way that I can distance myself from them. I intend to find an audience, or expand the one I've got. It's not that I think I have something so important to say that the world's been waiting for my wisdom since the dawn of time... except that I DO think that.

I intend to work on deflating my ego a little. Yes. Right. I intend to cultivate humility.

In the meantime, I say cheers to the brown bunnies!

May they obsess in good vegan, yoga-fied, oversexed health for another year to come!