Anti-Blogging

Since, as I mentioned somewhat forcefully in the last post, I'm trying to avoid interactions on the Internet, why am I reviving the blog?

It's simply a good repository for placing my otherwise scattered bits of writing in. And it can function as a real diary, too; there was always a reasoning behind the title. As indicated in a number of earlier posts, I gradually stripped PMD of many common bloggish characteristics. The list of what I don't do could, if I decided to tweak it slightly, become an anti-blogging manifesto, a set of Dogme 95-like rules:

I link out as little as possible.
I keep bells and whistles (graphics, embedded videos) to a minimum.
I eliminated the blogroll.
I keep the blog text-heavy.
I do not consider PMD to be a part of any sector of the blogosphere (book blogs, film blogs, whatever).
I do not participate in memes, tagging, blog awards, etc.
I eliminated the Sitemeter. I don't know who visits the blog or how many do.
I don't promote the blog. I eliminated the link from my email signatures.
I shut down comments.
I post no email address here. No one who doesn't know me in the "real world" can reach me.
I aim to be on the edge of invisibility. I don't plan to tell anyone I'm back, although a couple of my enterprising friends will undoubtedly find me out.

Of course this strategy taken as a whole does run the risk of seeming ostentatiously ascetic -- a common criticism leveled at the Dogme 95 film-makers, many of whom wound up breaking their own rules. (One of my favorite moments in the history of film marketing was when Harmony Korine took out a full-page ad in the New York Times detailing and apologizing for the transgressions against the rules in his Dogme 95-intended film Julien Donkey-Boy. Korine: "I confess to Chloë Sevigny's pregnant belly not being truly pregnant. I tried to impregnate her myself, but there wasn't enough time. Plus she felt not ready to carry a child for nine months. I did not try though. Perhaps it is my fault. Perhaps I am shooting blanks. And loving her the way I do, I did not want another man to give it a try. So we used a round foam pillow that was present on location in my Grandmother's closet.")

But even running that risk of pomposity, the only way I can blog at all is to circumscribe the activity as strictly as possible.

POSTSCRIPT: I decided to relent and tell one small web-group that I belong to and, in fact, founded.