A Wave We Rode Together, Once.
I like the fact I am part of something important.
Please understand that you are as well, being writers and poets and artists of all mediums that “perform” here. The Tumblr Writing Community has been and is a serious outlet for many of us. My guess is in the hundreds of thousands if not more, even if for a minute. Being that we provide our own audience built-in by the nature of what we do is both organic and authentic. In a culture geared towards visual blurbs with the content ranging from horrid scenes of real-life reality all the way down to cat-selfies (easy Catblrs, easy, I’m one, too) in a way that fires our imaginations AND dulls our senses, it is utterly amazing to me that there are literate people writing meaningful ideas and expressions and sharing them with one another. In an age where voice is so damned, very important due to the possibility of losing it publicly, we represent this end of the internet. Our demographic counts. Never lose sight of the fact, oh, my dear contemporaries, we represent culture. Not just our culture, but world culture.
I first touched this community almost seven years ago under another tumblr called “Whitey’s Place” whose original intention was being a blog featuring art and artists of ALL genre’s. The first time I saw someone’s words on here about killed me. A bilingual prose style that had Edwardian and Latin features. This person was putting herself through grad school raising kids, running a business and learning and writing Latin. Dude. Amazing doesn’t even touch some of the talent I have seen here. Knowing all of us here to some lesser or greater extent is part of a social phenomena, that place where we trade cultures. Freely. Hell, safely compared to what they are doing to each other out there, huh? I got involved in community here when I came off the road from truck driving due to a health injury. Long story, I’m better now. I got to travel here, intellectually, with some of what are affectionately (and not) known as the cool kids for a minute. It was fascinating to behold where people passionately and skillfully put words into effect over a course of their writing and evolved. Publishing went bat-shit, in and out of our rooms here. Can you even imagine how many servers they had to add just to keep stock-torrenting all of these files? Dayum. All of this and more for the simple cost of an e-mail address.
Like in any other social setting, things evolved here into this now. It’s become more friendly again and always interesting. It serves a purpose and it makes testament of the potential true greatness of the world. The beauty in us all must be our saving grace. Nothing else seems to be working well anymore in our worlds, inside and out. So we yearn, we look for something more. Anything more. I look around at us, smiths, painters, anime makers, archaeologists, pot growers, wine tasters, physical scientists, sculptors, rap and soul singers, all of us en masse doing and sharing what we love and make. That is a commodity worth more than the gold they don’t have in Fort Knox. Dance with that metaphor, I know you can. So, be good to each other. Long before us were the programmer types that built this place. A very, very few are left. If ever you meet one, thank them and ask them with respect just what community is. What I wrote here barely even touches the true definition of that. But like the rest of us I try, and I submit this to your scrutiny and your pleasure.
So, as we close into the new autocracy, ahem, I mean the new year, I wish to welcome you all to our world, the one made new every moment of every day. It will be sunshine and lollipops and exploding skateboards and the creepiest damn pictures and the most amazing living rooms we shall NEVER afford. And cats. Always with the damned cats.
turnnoffyourmind
andulkaphoto
tangentwithtanner
blakekathryn
