… I can join in the fun — it has arrived. IT has arrived. Against the Day. I’ve got it in my hands & can start reading….!

“To me, book is a tool for marketing the online writer, not the other way round.” Sez Finnish writer Leevi Lehto at http://nypoesi.net/?id=tekst&no=33. [Via http://jilltxt.net.]

So after the crazy schedule of last week — with a (2 day) workshop Social Software in Arnhem, a full Ubiscribe-day in Maastricht and a public lecture in Groningen — involving lots of travelling and intensive working hours… I collapsed. Flu? Virus? Just worn out? Spent friday till monday in bed, not being able to do anything. Only on monday I did a bit of reading and watching googlevideo-BBC-documentaries.

So sorry I was not here & sorry the comments were kept ‘on hold’ so long.

Now it’ll be only writing. (Five days less than I had hoped).

Last days in Maastricht, before I return to Amsterdam.

Picture showing me at the Mediamatic RFID-workshop, having a headache. Rob calls it “Arie hit by the implications of it all”.

Zondagavond: Maastricht – Amsterdam, halverwege tot de ontdekking komen dat je fietssleutels in je winterjas zitten die je niet aan hebt vanwege de uitzonderlijk hoge temperaturen. Geen zin in de tram na 2-en-een-half uur trein, 50 minuten wandelen naar huis. Maandagochtend: 7.15 – 8.05 lopen van huis naar het station. 8.17 trein naar Arnhem, die is te laat, waarmee je eigenlijk al weet dat je te laat op het werk (gastles) zult zijn. Trein is vol, je staat maar gelukkig kom je een kennis tegen (Paul van de Rock Supplies, wat de reis veraangenaamt en verkort). 9.45 aankomst (20 minuten te laat) op Arnhem. 10.00 stoptrein naar Presikhaaf. 10.15 voor de klas. 15.58 stoptrein Nijmegen. Stoptrein Roermond. Stoptrein Maastricht. Aankomst 18.45. Lopen naar de Jan van Eyck. 19.10 Aankomst.

Donderdagavond. Terug naar Maastricht. In de afgelopen 4×24 uur zo’n beetje 24 uur reistijd (rekenend van zondagavond 19.00 tot vanavond 19.00). Dinsdagavond: Maastricht – Amsterdam. Woensdagochtend Amsterdam – Groningen. Woensdagavond Groningen – Amsterdam. Donderdagochtend: Amsterdam – Arnhem Presikhaaf. Donderdagmiddag Arnhem Presikhaaf – Maastricht (Kanne). En bijna elke trein reed met (kleine) vertraging.

14 graden, en een mooi zonnetje, de zuidenwind is afgenomen & eigenlijk is het ideaal fietsweer. Zuid-Limburg wordt bevolkt door wandelaars en er zijn behoorlijk wat groepjes wielrenners op weg. 11.15 – 14.30. Al verlang ik inmiddels terug naar Amsterdam, en zelfs een beetje naar fietsen door de polder, ik zal het landschap hier gaan missen.

Kanne – Lanaye – Moelingen – Mesch – Libeek – Mheer – (stukje Altembroek) – Noorbeek – Vroelen – Ulvend – De Plank – Teuven – Gieveld – Eperheide – Terziet – Sippenaeken – Opsinnich – Remersdael – Veurs – St. Martensvoeren – Gravensvoeren – Berneau – Vise – kanaal – Kanne

De thermometer op het kruispunt in Blegny zei: 25-11 17 graden. 12-11 18 graden. Het was ridicuul warm. Het woei ook hard, heel hard, uit het zuiden, er recht tegenin langs het Albertkanaal kwam de snelheid soms niet boven de 18 per uur. Maar eenmaal in de luwte was het heerlijk fietsen. Achteraf merkwaardig dat ik niet veel verder ben gereden (wel, werk te doen). Hier en daar wat zitten dwalen en wel eens expres een klim gedaan waar een bord zei ‘doodlopend’.

Kanne – kanaal – Hermalle ss Argenteau – Sarolay – Housse – Saive – (onbekende klim v.v.) – Evegnee – Rue de Reux – fietspad – Melen – Barchon – Blegny – Mortier – Julemont – Val Dieu – Mortroux – Dalhem – Visee – kanaal – Kanne

Tetuzi Akiyama — my favorite guitar player of the moment — is playing with Jozef van Wissem at DNK/OT301 on monday. I’ve known this since months. I even scheduled my agenda around it, so I’d be able to go. And now I can’t….

This is a very simple and partial perception. When I started teaching HTML and webdesign, there were a lot of women and girls getting into that. That’s 10 years ago. When for the first time I did a guest lecture at an ICT-academy, some 3 years ago, the majority of students were boys, but at least there were some girls too. Next week I’l do a social software workshop at ICA in Arnhem and for the second time in a row all the students are boys. Not one single girl. Last week at the Mediamatic RFID-workshop all the participants were men/boys. Melanie Rieback was the only female & she was a speaker (and btw, by far the most hardcore technologist of all). Where are the girls? The problem is not that there aren’t any good role models… or no good female teachers, or developers around (in my immediate environment I can think of Joan Heemskerk of Jodi, Sher Doruff, Kristina Andersen, or fokky). (And Flickr was developed by Christina Fake). The thing is also that these workshops are not ‘about technology’ at all — and if they are about technology it’s really lo-tech. These workshops are much much more about social use — and I think it’s a very bad idea to let the whole field of developing and thinking up of new tools, to the boys only…

Ah well. Please tell me I’m wrong.

“An author who is writing specifically for a public is not really writing; it is the public that is writing, and for this reason the public can no longer be a reader; reading only appears to exist, actually it is nothing. This is why works created to be read are meaningless: no one reads them. This is why it is dangerous to write for other people, in order to evoke the speech of others and reveal them to themselves: the fact is that other people do not want to hear their own voices; they want to hear someone else’s voice, a voice that is real, profound, troubling like the truth.” p. 365

Maurice Blanchot, ‘Literature and the Right to Death’ in The Station Hill Blanchot Reader, Barrytown, Station Hill, 1999, p. 359-399.

Sometimes I can read Blanchot, and what he writes I find beautiful and deeply true. Sometimes I cannot read Blanchot, and what he writes is to me as words from an ideal, transcendental realm, unconnected to lived reality.

… and then there are books that are very difficult to finish. Books about which you wonder, while reading if it is worth while at all. Books that strike you as weak, superfluous, boring, books of which you hardly understand what it’s about or what ‘the fuss’ is about, but that nevertheless carry you forth, page after page. Mark Z. Danielewski Only Revolutions falls into that category. I am reading it, still, sometimes, like 50 pages at a stretch. The text seems to me limited — however ‘beautifully’ the book is made –, limited as a celebration of the United States as the union or the love between both the protagonists, always (all ways) on the run. (Well, this is what the book seems to be — a celebration of “America”, that is at the same point a critique of America — a venerable tradition in American literature). Yet the ending (of both their narratives) has a tone that is reminiscent of the last pages of FW — which is another way of saying they are very very beautiful. Then again the connection between the story and the events in world history (the chronicle in the margin) is not really there — which makes the chronicle like a trick only. And I was very disappointed to see that Danielewski decided to not imagine what will happen in the future…

So, what is this book by Danielewski… Is it an example of what literature can be now (and in the future), or is it a mistake and a failure… a good one, for sure, but still a mistake & failure. (Adding here that I think FW is not a mistake and failure, nor is Infinite Jest, but that for instance the later novels of Arno Schmidt may be seen as mistakes & failures).

I’d love to read a good essay on this….