Context and Batman

I had written a much lengthier piece for this week's post, but with the benefit of someone else's advice, I did not post it.

The reading really inspired me to try something new (one suggestion by Elbow being to write in the voice of someone else), and I just went with it. I tried to write in the spirit of Dennis Leary. I poked fun at Batman. And in one sense, it was a beautiful piece.

I was also still riding a wave of inspiration from having seen a performance of the Broadway hit: "Title of Show". In "Title of Show" one of the musical's conflicts was how to overcome creative blocks - which was resolved by a fantastically decadent number, "Die Vampire Die!". These two forces (our reading and "Title of Show") unearthed some fairly hefty concerns, desires, speculation, and philosophical query. Nonetheless, in quite another sense, the piece was rather ugly if not downright disparaging and rude.

What has "disappointed" me up to this point in the semester has been our lack (mine included) of reader participation with one an other's blog posts. If the purpose of the blog post is merely to execute a surface level analysis of the readings, then is blogging really serving any purpose? I want to become a better writer. Not only that, but I would also like to better understand how one can learn to become a better writer. Elbow had some great ideas in this chapter about how to do just that (writing groups etc.), and my initial post was an attempt to provoke a reaction in hopes of triggering a REAL discussion about writing and writing pedagogy. I believe firmly that, if we wanted to, we could plummet the depths of writing pedagogy and philosophy while becoming better writers ourselves. But to do so would require that we heed Elbow's advice and help one another. It would ALSO require that we(myself included)steer away from simple surface analyses and give in to the spirit of writing exploration.

Unfortunately, the original post would probably have been received in poor taste without first explaining context. This post is attempting to provide some of that context. So are the three clips that follow.

And PS. I REALLY do not like Batman.