On the Beat

I have spent much of today doing something that I have been meaning to do for a very long time. Indeed, it is one of the things I have been meaning to do since I first started this journal, and something I have talked over with some of you at different times.

I finally got around to transcribing some old letters. Well, since I have only just started, that should be letter (although I have a stack more to get through. I could go on and on; and I probably will).

It was an odd experience: reading what I was doing more than twenty five years ago – the summer of 1980. (Please, I really do not want to know how old you were then. Especially if you weren’t even born…) I will be posting this sometime – soon, I guess, once I have found and scanned the old photographs that go with it – so I shan’t go on about what I was doing back then. But it is strange: memory works in a very odd way. There are things that I have a very clear memory of, which I didn’t write about; and things that I wrote about that I am amazed I can’t remember.

It is odd to read back through old letters. I am not sure that I like the boy I was nearly twenty six years ago – though not a great deal has changed. I was just immature, I guess. But some of the things I said! Jeez, what a prick. (I decided to only do minimal editing – so just about all my crassness will remain for your entertainment, should you want to read what I wrote back then.)

In other news, I am perhaps two thirds of the way through loading my CDs onto my iPod (and no, it doesn’t have another name. Until it breaks, when it will get called every rude name under the sun).

It is fascinating the way shuffle throws up odd juxtapositions – OK, I know you all know this, but it is new for me. And I keep finding music that I haven’t played for a long time (some with good reason, others sounding like a new discovery – or seeing an old friend for the first time in ages.

Right, I am off to hunt through a bunch of twenty five year old slides...

I have just realised that I also have the habit of talking about people in the abstract – “a friend”.

This is because these people (and there are a few of them) look at my journal sometimes (or so I am lead to believe); they would recognise the situation, but others wouldn’t recognise them.

But also because their precise identity isn’t important: it is what it says about me – so the post is about me, not them.

I really do think I may be thinking about this too much. It must just be the mood I am in…

When I started writing this journal, I was moderately concerned about anonymity. We all know the internet is a scary, scary place, after all.

So I think I followed frankie_ecap’s form of using people’s initials to protect their identity. (I think she had her own reasons and habits for doing this, and it seemed to work.) Even the cats...

There are some people I asked explicitly if I could use their name – their first name – for specific posts. (I tend to ask friends if I am posting something about them which might be private, as well.) Whenever I have done this, they’ve been happy about it.

I was thinking about this today. I was having lunch with three people who are former colleagues (and whom three people on my flist know; but two of those haven’t wandered by in the last six months). And I was thinking about writing something about it – and juggling with four different initials. It just didn’t work for me.

I reckon that I may well start using first names for people I see, just because it is easier. I can’t see that it causes any harm, and it may make sense – and even help.

I’ll stick with LJ user names anytime I write anything about someone with an LJ account (but hey, I may not even know!); but otherwise, I’ll just stick to first names. So, so much easier.

So now I really have been on LJ for a year.

It has been different to how I expected: I find myself writing about different things – I expected to write about things long ago, whereas most things I write about are recent.

I thought I would write about politics more; but other people seem to do that much, much better.

I have found it much harder to write about music than I expected – I find it hard to get the right words down.

And, bizarrely, it seems so much easier to write about things I don’t like than things – performances – that I really love. I think it is perhaps easier to identify why things don’t work than what it is that makes something special.

I am irritated at my punctuation: too many exclamation marks!!! And an over-fondness of ellipses…

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