Thursday, November 25, 2004
please read the white space
The most fundamental fact of human existence is that because people are embodied they are always ‘somewhere.’ Philip Sheldrake
I reckon that the internet rips away our margins and our contexts. All we see is text or image on a page. We forget the white space, that words and images emerge from somewhere. When those words are somewhere else, they are best understood from somewhere else rather than from your screen. Tricky aye.
We slam people, we get angry, we expect all the world to be like us. It ain’t. Sorry.
This is not a bad thing though. This offers us the gift of ‘somewhere’, the chance to move beyond our place to another place.
Next time you want to flame someone, practise the discipline of white space. Read the words again from somewhere else.
)
One of the interesting things about this phenomonon is that every time I am flamed and it’s happened 3 or four times in a year), my readership shoots up – not just a spike for a day or two, but a sustained increase in readership. Is that because people come to watch a fight? I hope it’s NOT that, although some sociological observers might suggest it is. But maybe it also has something to do with the fact that if you’re say something worth saying it will get reactions both pro- and anti-?
Anyway, I like your thoughts about the spaces.
Comment by maggi — November 25, 2004 @ 10:04 pm