The First Cut is Always the Worst

Much time and effort has been spilled over the merits or lack thereof of this medium through which I am sending out this little monologue. I am of the camp that believes that blogging is limited only by the imaginations, talents, and abilities of the blogger and not by the medium itself as others might lead you to believe.

For me a blog is as its core a diary that is delivered in an electronic context through the Internet. Beyond that one is getting into specifics with regards to taste and opinion and all other sorts of subjective criteria. A blog... a web-log. Using the web to log verbal information of whatever sort suits the blogger.

Me, I have developed an intense love of the written word. I have written a whole shitload of words in the last five years, to varying degrees of effectiveness, and I have done so as honestly as I could and as clearly as I could. I make no claims towards anything close to talent or focus or even drive. I simply am drawn to my need to express myself through the written word and I also happen to love spewing it out into a public context.

So many people bemoan the lack of interest that is met in the face of blogging but to me that whole deal is a sort of red herring. The Internet is all about meeting people half way, and blogging is about expressing yourself in whatever fashion you deem appropriate.

To me this is much like playing in a band in that as a band member I have always been sickened by the prospect of self-promotion. Maybe it's some sort of elitist hogwash but I simply hate the idea of trying to sell myself to someone who would be otherwise uninterested.

That I am this way speaks little to my actual passion for not only creative expression but for my need to be understood and recognized.

Yes, I have an ego, but it's not the sort that lends itself to brash and arrogant statements of dominance and mastery. For me, my ego is one that lives in need of being understood. Not that I am hard to understand, mind you, just that to me, to be totally misread or misinterpreted, especially at a time when I feel I have been articulate and quite clear, is something that I find almost unbearable.

Over these last few years I have learned the hard way that being understood is so much a part of the way in which you are read, by who is reading you, and less by whatever hoops you might jump through in order to be "gotten".

I have wasted literally weeks worth of hours practically worrying over how much I have been misread or misunderstood in all the ways in which I have chosen to communicate. And a short list will refer us back to music, writing, speaking, art, etc...

I have made great efforts in order to be understood, but you know what? No matter how clear you find yourself to be, it is always up to the 'other' in the equation to define the force of your message and of your communicative powers.

My waxing on this subject seems to imply that in the case of a great orator or a great writer that their work is only as good those who take it in, and in a sense it is. But there is also this: there are numerous, often very complex reasons why it is that a given person is grasped in a satisfactory manner or not.

So what's the point?

This is a blog about writing, about communicating your essential embrace of living, and while those sentiments seem clear enough, it will nonetheless be up to those who take part in this to actually give it all the life and blood that it needs to survive.

So you are here now, reading me, reading my writing and in a sense taking my communication.

Think of this post as a request.

Can you write? Do you want to talk to others through the written word? Does something burn you from the inside? Give it to us, take a chance, get over your fears of whatever it is that is topping you and just do it.

I want more and more and more of you to get involved in this.

Will I be the enveloping parent with the comforting touch always there with a kind word of encouragement? I might, and I might not. If you need that from me in order to come out of your shell and give us something so real it will make me cry then do so, I fucking need it.

Maybe you know me, maybe you don't. Maybe you have followed my writing, maybe this is your first dip into my pool of ugliness. No matter.

Give us here at Blind Butcher something real on which to chew and with your help this thing will grow up and run itself.

This is a blog with both modest and improbably massive ambitions both in play at once.

Hit me up in private if you want to discuss ways in which you can contribute to this. I'm all ears. If you have never written with your true voice because you're not sure what that might mean, contact me. I can help you understand why it is that you need an outlet. Why not let Blind Butcher be that place for you?

The first cut is always the worst.

johncramer68 @ gmail . com