The guest speaker in my class yesterday was talking about platforms and digital media, and commented that books are no longer the thing. The latter comment broke my heart a bit even if it was right.
Books don’t make you famous or influential in the way they once did. Some people make it work but if Ian McHarg or Humphrey Rempton were around today they’d be using social media.
He certainly has a point.
But I also still love books. I still love the world of writers I have longed to be a part of for as long as I can remember. Perhaps I am a stubborn straggler in this. The amount of books I read is both a party trick and something that has only ever felt truly understood by others who love books and writing the way I do — this connection is almost always occurs while I am reading.
There are some books that do make things so perhaps he is wrong as well. The Happy City and Joyful come to mind. Both are influential books with long lives, both are books I am spending time with in my research.
I think a lot about these platforms and where to post and what to post, where to spend my time. My scattered energies pull me in so many different directions. I want to leave Twitter, it ain’t what it used to be and it’s only going to get worse. I remember Wordpress and Tumble and Neopets. All of them historical artifacts.
I was a photographer once. In the process of accepting that I would no longer be a photographer I stopped using Instagram, I unfollowed all of the people doing the thing I could no longer do that I used to follow. I went away for a while. Then I came back and I started using Instagram for something different. Now I like it far more than Twitter. My account and life are very different. Things change. Our bodies, our lives, our interests, our technologies.
None of these things are permanent in an endless shifting sea.
Then there’s Austin Kleon saying simple good things last. Email lists, the blog on your website.
I might add books.
Something I can hold in my hand, mark up, fold, bend, mess up, hang out with.
Austin Kleon would tell me that blog posts become books. That I should keep writing, writing everyday. Watch it add up. And if the books make you happy and nobody notices who really cares?