There's a Wordpress version of this blog, identical to this one which is hosted by Google Blogger. When I started in 2010 Google had a nasty habit of deleting entire blogs- every single post gone at the flick of a switch, usually under pressure from the DMCA (a 1998 US law to protect digital copyright). Google took down The Vinyl Villain in this way for copyright contraventions (posting songs). I use the Wordpress version of Bagging Area as a fallback and as a backup in case Google ever pulled the plug on this- that threat seems to have gone away, music blogs really aren't the enemy in modern music. I still back this blog up over there every day, it's probably prudent to have a backstop I think.
But this isn't a post about that. The dashboard at Wordpress has added a box in the centre of the screen headed 'Daily Writing Prompt'. The first time I noticed this box the daily writing prompt was this...
'What's the meaning of life?'
Which is kind of a biggie isn't it? And presented as a quick writing prompt for a poor blogger lacking in inspiration.
Soul II Soul grappled with it back in 1989 and Jazzie B found some answers- dreaming of your goals, positivity, elevating your mind, feel free to experiment, implement your ideas, feel the feeling, let your body take control.
Then the drop comes and Jazzie lets us have it...
'So there it is, work it out for yourself/ Be selective, be objective, be an asset to the collective/ Get a life'.
There's worse advice.
A year later Jane's Addiction closed their still superb sounding second album Ritual de lo Habitual with Classic Girl, a Perry Farrell love song for his partner and muse Casey Niccoli with some gorgeously restrained chiming chords played through a flange FX pedal. At the end Perry throws in 'They may say 'Those were the days'/ But in a way you know, for us, these are the days', and as I thought about Jazzie B's meaning of life, Perry's seemed equally well reasoned.
I love Classic Girl, five minutes of music that just hits all the spots.
Two days ago, as this unreal heatwave hit us and we began to bake Wordpress offered this as a writing prompt- 'what's a moment that made you question reality?'
9 comments:
Those writing prompts are tough........I reckon it would drive me insane trying to respond to them on a daily basis.
I don't know what's the meaning of life, but I know, thanks to XTC that it begins at The Hop and that It's What You Make Of It when you go by the creed of Talk Talk.
Talk Talk as eve r making a great deal of sense.
Do you have an automated process for backing Blogger up to Wordpress? Or is it a manual step each time you write a new post?
It sued to be really easy martin, there was an import button and you could just copy and paste the url. They took that away and now I manually copy and paste the title, then the photo, then the text etc. and click publish
I got a takedown request recently - first one I've had, I think, but I don't generally post mp3s. The takedown request was for using a photo somebody must have had copyright on. Anyway, when I clicked on the link to sort it out, the offending party must have thought better of it as the link took me to a page that had since been deleted.
I keep thinking of moving to WP anyway, but it's just the hassle of doing so.
When a dying Warren Zevon was asked what he knew about life, he suggested that we should enjoy every sandwich. Nic Jones offers similar advice in his beautiful song, 'Now'.
The past has gone
The future will come
The soul shows us how
We're here in the now
Be still somewhere
Each moment aware
That the now is here
So simple and so clear
Warren Zevon's enjoy every sandwich crosses my mind quite often
I think Blogger changed their export format, possibly to make the WP backup harder. I'd like to move to WP but the effort of manually moving 20+ yrs of content is just too much...
Plain Or Pan continues to receive regular, if infrequent, traffic from someone/something sinister called app.copytrack . Closer inspection shows this is a copyright protection service. It terrifies me to think I might have everything remotely deleted on account of embedding - not even sharing - an old mp3. In the murky past I had entire posts wiped overnight, which is equally as sinister as it is upsetting, but I’m hoping that in this day and age, anyone considering action against me for waxing lyrical about an old Talking Heads b-side and embedding said track for anyone who’s never heard it will realise there are more important things to be getting on with. It’s a tightrope all the same. Must look into backing it all up like you have.
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