All Along the Watchtowers: Reclaiming Blogging, Artisitc Autonomy and Freedom from Social Media.
“No reason to get excited
The thief, he kindly spoke.
There are many here among us
Who feel that life is but a joke.”
It’s tempting to start this post with a mighty and cheery “Hello World”! Those two words, so well known and loved to the generation of us who lived and browsed in the era before social media. Those long-gone days of blogging and wordpress, of RSS feeds and bookmarked sites.
I feel a bit giddy in truth. A tame but definite elation, at the prospect of reclaiming a space that has been almost demolished by the tyrannical, all-encompassing, all-flattening spread and domination of social media. A domination that’s been simultaneously an explosion and an implosion; an initially outward illusion and promise of an unprecedented expansion of human ‘connection’, which has actually resulted in an almost violent collapse inwards, of a politico/corporate controlled narrowing and polarisation of perspectives, connections, relationships and human expression.
My long-time followers on instagram will find some of this writing to be familiar. In one way or another, I’ve grappled with this thorn in my conscience. Of seeing the disturbingly dysfunctional direction that social media was taking, under the wranglings and twistings of that pan-global Medusa of digital Mega Corporations; while trying to find a way to share my work and create an audience for my art.
As someone who has chosen to be a working artist, to dedicate myself to my chosen artform, the issue of how to maintain the integrity of both my art and myself as an artist, in an age where I’m being asked to make more and more unacceptable sacrifices of my artistic vision, and the expression of that vision, is no small thing.
What do you do, when you’re asked to sacrifice the very things that define the uniqueness of your work, the You-ness-of-You, that indefinable essence born of your own unique state of existing in the world, with all its complexity, colourful madness, its gnarly, problematic, and untrappable fluidity?
What do you do, when you’re being both subtly and obviously coerced to dam up, to block and censor, the very source waters of your creativity, the life-blood of your vision as an artist and a human being, in order to strap yourself into a few pre-coded digital templates, of approved and validated ‘identities’, ‘looks’, ‘hashtags’ and ‘categories’, in exchange for the one thing that has become more important for the modern day artist than even their art itself: Visibility!
“All along the watchtower,
Princes kept the view.
While all the women came and went…”
And what has this cacophony of visibility and validation, the posts and tweets and feeds given us, really? Other than a world of growing universal deafness and emotional numbness, fed by the crushing clutter of childish and half-formed opinion; of mediocre expressions hailed as art; of every second person proclaiming as ‘Artiste’ or ‘Writer’; of the stripping away of the artist's independence of vision and expression in exchange for mindless regurgitations of platform-approved ideologies, policed and validated by a mass of unwitting idealogues?
It’s given us an artistic landscape flattened by totalitarian visions and manichean value systems of with-us-or-against-us. It has led to the eradication of all ambiguity, nuance and subtlety, those critical artistic arteries through which the ineffable should find its peculiar expression through each artist.
There must be some kind of way outta here
Said the joker to the thief.
There's too much confusion
I can't get no relief.
How do you maintain an honest connection to those source waters of your creative outflowing when you’re forced to flap and flail and eventually lobotomize yourself into a square or a reel or a please-please-see-me!
How and when did we get to this state where we allow the canvas to decide what the artist should look like? From the earliest cave paintings the human artist decided exactly what the canvas would say. In less than two decades, we have allowed this endearing legacy of artistic autonomy and independence of vision to be thoroughly endangered.
And whether it was the clarity that has settled quietly on me in this enforced time of stillness and rest brought on by my struggle with severe anaemia, or whether it was the result of years of watching and grappling with these thoughts within my inner spaces, I have come to the decision that I am done enslaving myself and my work as an artist to the increasingly oppressive and unreasonable hoops, tightropes, traps and contortionist acrobatics being demanded by social media platforms.
And this is not our fate
So let us stop talkin' falsely now
The hour's getting late, hey, hey!”
These spaces that have appointed themselves arbiters and grand inquisitors of the artistic and literary world, these pseudo-realities with their fake moralities and fashionable outrage, all serving the greed of corporate behemoths and techno tyrants, the most insidious yet most threatening imperialists and colonialists of the modern age.
I have reached that exhilarating point of no return within myself. The point where I decisively say No. We shouldn't be mortgaging our art and our personal integrity for the hollow currency of likes, and followers, and algorithm visibility. It has led to a loss of not just integrity and evolution in the artistic and literary fields of our day, but also to an increase, nay glorification, of a shallow, self-aggrandizing mediocrity.
My days of hesitant and reluctant participation in this dystopian experiment are done. Gone are the days of scrolling through Instagram and it's bloated visual clutter and destructive emotional stimulation/manipulation. While I will continue to use the squares of social media as the most convenient bulletin board that it is, my rekindled motivation and enthusiasm for my art and writings, and my time, effort and care in sharing that with all of my dear readers and viewers, will henceforth be channelled through this blog, website and my video podcasts on my youtube channel.
Just writing this post has been the most invigorating writing experience I have had in years! I cannot express to you enough the vitalizing quality of the energy that has awoken within me since this decision was made. And with every word and sentence I have written here, that feeling has solidified within me. If you have managed to stay with me till this point, I can only say thank you. Thank you so so much for being here and for witnessing my creative rebirth. I hope you will stay with me, that you will subscribe to the blog or add it to your RSS feed, and that you will ride this electric stimulation, this reawakening of the Creative Source from within me.
May we all break free from the shackles that have been put on us and that we have put on ourselves. May we allow the shining light of Truth and Source to speak through us, to enliven and enlighten all our works, arts, writings and makings. May the dams be broken. May we all set ourselves Free.
*Quotes from Bob Dylan’s great song performed to greatness by Jimi Hendrix, titled All Along the Watchtower.
