{"id":7950,"date":"2015-12-19T15:24:00","date_gmt":"2015-12-19T15:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeiswhathappens.ca\/?p=7950"},"modified":"2026-01-15T19:59:35","modified_gmt":"2026-01-15T19:59:35","slug":"its-all-about-the-words-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeiswhathappens.ca\/?p=7950","title":{"rendered":"It&#8217;s all about the words&#8230;.."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s all about the words. This is the inspiration I read in the Globe the other day. It was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.paulvermeersch.ca\/2015\/12\/russell-smith-writes-about-my-sunrise.html\">Russell Smith&#8217;s&nbsp;<\/a>column on art, poetry and blogging. It begins by saying:<\/p>\n<div class=\"embeddable-body\" style=\"background-color: white;border: 0px;color: black;font-family: Garuda, Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;font-style: normal;font-variant: normal;font-weight: normal;letter-spacing: normal;line-height: 1.5;margin-bottom: 20px;margin-left: 80px;margin-right: 0px;margin-top: 0px !important;margin: 0px 0px 20px 80px;padding: 0px;text-align: left;text-indent: 0px;text-transform: none;vertical-align: baseline;white-space: normal;width: 460px\">\n<div class=\"selectionShareable\" style=\"border: 0px;color: #555555;font-family: PrattRegular, Georgia, serif;line-height: 31px;margin: 10px 0px;padding: 0px;vertical-align: baseline\">\nA blog is a hobby; a blog is a notebook; a blog is a forum; a blog is a piece of art. A blog is unpaid, and so can rewrite our idea of what a journal is, what publication is. It reminds us that, in the age of culturecrat jargon such as \u201cviability\u201d and \u201cprivate-public partnerships,\u201d we can give away art entirely for free and that art can infiltrate a larger culture and therefore be worth something all on its own.<\/div>\n<div class=\"selectionShareable\" style=\"border: 0px;color: #555555;font-family: PrattRegular, Georgia, serif;line-height: 31px;margin: 10px 0px;padding: 0px;vertical-align: baseline\">\n&#8230;&#8230; in a sense, all art is about other art, if only in that it cannot help but refer to art that has preceded it. If it is a poem, it echoes all other poems that use the same language; if it is a painting, it exists in a continuum of paintings with the same colours or themes.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div class=\"selectionShareable\" style=\"border: 0px;color: #555555;font-family: PrattRegular, Georgia, serif;line-height: 31px;margin: 10px 0px;padding: 0px;vertical-align: baseline\">\n(Art\/blogging is) &#8220;an exercise \u2026\u201d The words that follow could be anything \u2013 line, colour, silence, changing scales, transgression \u2013 but the idea of the exercise is constant. (Evelyn Waugh, for example: \u201cI regard writing not as investigation of character, but as an exercise in the use of language, and with this I am obsessed.\u201d)<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>This is all the rationale I needed to restart my regular blog again.<\/p>\n<p>For me, writing is about this precision in the use of language. It&#8217;s about bon mots, succinct phrases and the many nuances of words in carefully arranged sentences.<\/p>\n<div class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both;text-align: center\">\n<a href=\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/img\/b\/R29vZ2xl\/AVvXsEh5i715oayzZq5NNWCn67AKSh9PHGe2hUvo0JHJbzjnTxvsnx0nNKTNlx1uc2WrFIQ_DOE6GBgF9ew1gs7sjQhZC_zVAHJghhR70kKRnQZW9Tt9E5bk9dGqiy6Y27LF_dkRP6HbCQ\/s320\/glasses+at+night.jpg\" style=\"margin-left: 1em;margin-right: 1em\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" height=\"291\" src=\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/img\/b\/R29vZ2xl\/AVvXsEh5i715oayzZq5NNWCn67AKSh9PHGe2hUvo0JHJbzjnTxvsnx0nNKTNlx1uc2WrFIQ_DOE6GBgF9ew1gs7sjQhZC_zVAHJghhR70kKRnQZW9Tt9E5bk9dGqiy6Y27LF_dkRP6HbCQ\/s320\/glasses+at+night.jpg\" width=\"320\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<p>Writing 365 blogs in 365 days, a few years ago, was a challenge. However, I loved it. In fact, I wrote on topics I would never have considered had I not had my back against the proverbial wall.<\/p>\n<p>I think that I have to try that again. Although my blog is called &#8220;Life is what happens,&#8221; life is more exciting, if you make things happen.<\/p>\n<p>The picture? For all those times when I can say that I have seen the light.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s all about the words. This is the inspiration I read in the Globe the other day. It was Russell Smith&#8217;s&nbsp;column on art, poetry and blogging. It begins by saying: A blog is a hobby; a blog is a notebook; a blog is a forum; a blog is a piece of art. A blog is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6255,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blogging","category-words"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeiswhathappens.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeiswhathappens.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeiswhathappens.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeiswhathappens.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeiswhathappens.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7950"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lifeiswhathappens.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7950\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7951,"href":"https:\/\/lifeiswhathappens.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7950\/revisions\/7951"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeiswhathappens.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeiswhathappens.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeiswhathappens.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeiswhathappens.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}