Monday, May 27, 2013

Radge against the machine

I feel it would be remiss of me to let the decision of a blogging contemporary and like-minded soul to give up the ghost pass without remark. I've been at this for about five years now, and Radge was there when I began, putting his thoughts out there in the same kind of way I wanted to and chiming in with encouraging words on my own efforts as I went along. Personal blogging has always been an easy target for accusations of narcissism, though it rarely contains anything more revealing than a Twitter feed, a personal essay or newspaper column, and doesn't suppose that its audience are interested in multiple blurry shots of every drunken night out they have. Radge, as with so many of the others he mentions, was always trying to articulate life as it happened, equal parts appalled by and in thrall to all the things he encountered. Writing projects, without the usual incubation period. There was a brief period, probably early 2009, when at least one of these people, often Radge, could be counted on to have something great for me to read every day. Moseys around Dublin, thefts of PM Dawn, flights of fantasy,Serious Thoughts on Serious Things. It was exciting.
I survey my own 312 posts over the last few years and only feel pleased with vague snippets of a few of them, only feel that little bits of them capture what it's like to be me or someone like me in Dublin in the 21st century. But that's enough, quite honestly. If Radge can do the same with his 803 pieces then it was all time well spent.

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