Hurting each other

[Peter Byrne Manchester <PMANCHESTER@ccmail.sunysb.edu>]

       Wise words were posted today from the Department of Attitude about the 
hurt feelings that have been professed of late and the ascriptions of cynicism 
that are being bandied about.  I can't quote them, because now that IED's The 
Garden is available, Ron Hill's Cloudbusting project has come to fruition, and 
Bill Wisner has stabilized the LH Digest archives for retrospective reference, 
I mostly throw away the daily digest unless there are postings that grab my 
personal interest or threads that I want to consult in real time.  I have no 
real time lately, so I've been throwing everything away.

       The recent convulsions in this newsgroup are really not analogous to 
the classic flame wars on gaffa, to early versions of which Jon Drukman 
directs our attention.  'Flaming' is a rather stylized and cultivated forensic 
gesture, indulged in its classic form by people who had quite a lot of 
experience on the nets and in reading newsgroups in USENET.  What we have now 
seems to me a new phenomenon, and I can't help but think that it reflects a 
new kind of situation, one in which the presence of a lot of new and somewhat 
tentative participants is producing an odd 'hair trigger' effect.  Old hands 
here are giving way to pugnacious posts, then repenting their words and 
apologizing to one another.

       I am as dissatisfied with the efforts to analyze what's going on here 
in terms of 'emotion' as I am when Kate Bush tries to talk about her artistic 
goals in the same way.  Among the distinctive accomplishments of her work is 
its integration of emotion with intellect, feeling with thoughtfulness and 
reflection.  I think that the relevant category is the PERSONAL.  Kate has an 
uncanny capacity to touch us personally, and to elicit highly personal 
responses and reflections from us.

       We should not be surprised to discover that because we find ourselves 
posting to this newsgroup in highly personal ways, we get embroiled in all the 
collisions and abrasions and misunderstandings to which human persons are so 
vulnerable.  Take some instruction from Kate!  Learn to try on masks, to wear 
Babooshka suits, to entertain the viewpoint of other personages, to INVENT 
personages (e.g. IED), to put some distance between one's own poor naked self 
and who one appears to be under a name or over a sig in a network posting.  
Cut some slack for the other one, too.

       Wanna be cranky or bitchy or cynical or crass, or dopey-bedazzled, or 
whatever, have a good time and go for it!  ATTITUDE is a game and a craft.  
Take some counsel from our own adepts.

       Speaking personally, I want to note how welcome I found Richard 
Caldwell's reflections about Cathy and Kate and Catherine Bush.  I don't have 
his post before me, and I don't know how many of the concrete illustrations of 
his points I would join him in, but I do know that he is talking about matters 
that belong to any serious appreciation of that woman's work.  It is real work 
and we had better be ready for where it goes next.

............................................................................
                                                            Peter Manchester
"C'mon, we all sing!"                            pmanchester@sbccmail.bitnet
                                               pmanchester@ccmail.sunysb.edu