Blogging is not an Art. And yet, Here We Are.

Blogging is not a form of art. It is a form of expression. Therefore, blogging and art share the same ancestor but they are not the same species. I have always been an opinionated person, but I never had a strong desire to get into blogging. It seemed too easy. Too cheap. And more than that, it seemed almost like the trendy version of expression. A form of expression that doesn’t really need passion, it could exist and thrive purely on the desire to be heard or noticed and not necessarily on creating and sharing something special. The biggest appeal to blogging is also its biggest criticism: anyone can do it. No one is above blogging, and yet in some minds, it is beneath many. Blogging can easily be seen as a hodgepodge of individuals who do not necessarily have something meaningful to say, but just want to be heard.

For me personally, I have no desire to create a page explicitly for the use of blogging. Everybody has thoughts and opinions, and many people can articulate these thoughts in a way that captivate. It takes humility to recognize that although I may be a writer, blogging is an even playing field of expression. There is always a perceived upper echelon for every art. For music it’s the Grammy winners and platinum artists at the top, for movies it’s the box-office smashers and Oscar winners, for poetry it’s the award winners such as the Pulitzer Prize among many others, for novelists it’s the best-seller’s list. If you were to ask who is the upper echelon of bloggers, the way this would be determined is solely who has the most followers. Which means that the very concept of success in blogging is rooted in popularity. Blogging then almost becomes synonymous with popularity. The contrast of this is if you do not have many followers, you are just another blogger. Which is why I have seen bloggers get frustrated because they do not get enough likes, comments, or followers. This frustration is further proof that people blog to be heard and noticed, not to create art. No art has a criterion of success that depends SOLELY on popularity. Having said all that, my page is and will always be to share my poetry works (By the way, Alma Mater Vol. 2: The Northeast is on sale now for only 99 cents on Amazon.com – a collection of poetry that celebrates the top universities of the Northeast;) but, while I’m here, why not impart my views on matters that I feel should be spoken on – from the trivial to the neglected?

So for me, blogging is great for an ancillary item on a page otherwise devoted to art. My advice to bloggers, whether your page is devoted to blogging or if it’s just an ancillary item on your page, is to blog on what you care about. If that turns out to be 100 topics a day, so be it. I do not know how many times I will blog…if it will be daily, weekly, monthly… but whatever I will blog about, regardless of how much or how little I care about the topic, it will be something that I feel needs to be said.

Although blogging is not an art, artists still flock to it. Why is that? My first poetry series, Art of Mind, revolved around the idea that any and every thought is a form of art. From the mundane and whimsical to the personal and philosophical. Because some of the greatest thoughts and ideas have never been heard or shared, but it still existed. Therefore, the reason why artists love blogging so much is obvious: although the medium of blogging is not an art, it provides the widest platform for the greatest and most pervasive art of all….the father that all art spawns from, the ancestor of everything that has ever been created: thought. Say what you will about blogging, but if nothing else, it is the biggest promoter of thought. Where nothing is off limits and everything is welcome. Based on this description, then, we learn that blogging may not be an art, but it is a utopia for artists as well as thinkers.

Speaking for myself, what has kept me from blogging is the thought that if I have something to say, why just say it? It’s too boring and too easy. I’d rather put it in a poem. I can imagine many feeling the same way but for them it would be “put it in a song” or “put it in a story.” I say, why not poetize what needs to poetized, sing what needs to be sung, draw what needs to be drawn, script what needs to be scripted, and in the case of blogging, simply say what needs to be said. You see, blogging may not be an art, but the two do not have to be mutually exclusive. Sometimes the best way to convey a thought is not in a poem, song, script, etc. Sometimes what needs to be said simply….needs to be said. Because not everybody has a poem to recite, a book to write, a script to produce or a song to sing….but everyone has something to say, most especially: artists.

Follow ClydeAidoo.com for more poems from the Art of Mind and Alma Mater series. You can purchase Clyde Aidoo’s latest release, Alma Mater Vol. 2: The Northeast, a poetic celebration of the top universities of the Northeast below.