For some time now, humans have been broadcasting radio waves containing content of one sort or another into outer space, by means of signals strong enough to get through the ionosphere. The idea is there might be civilizations out there somewhere that are sufficiently like ours that they can decipher the content and respond.
So far, to my knowledge, nothing particularly intelligible has come back. That's remarkably like this blog.
I mention this because, for reasons totally unclear to me, visits to my blog, and the number of posts at least viewed, appear to be increasing in a rather notable fashion. Not that anything has "gone viral." Far, far, far from it and perhaps thankfully so. (That's probably not the best turn of phrase these days, anyway.)
I say "apparently" because there is no way of knowing what to make of reported statistics on things like visits, views, clicks, impressions, etc. For one thing, they seem to differ greatly depending upon where one goes to get measurements.
Or maybe Google has decided to simply credit me with some favorable statistics to keep me going. But since this blog has no ads, that doesn't make much sense. It's a mystery.
When I first started blogging -- not this one, but a blog called "The Wine Commentator" -- I received comments from readers from time to time. And when I announced that I was closing it down, a surprising number of people who I had never heard from said they were sorry to see it go. Who knew?
But that was a while back, before Twitter (I'm not on Twitter or Facebook) became the way to go.
Early on, when I briefly tried to promote my first novella, "Manhattan Morning," on Facebook because that was what self-publishers were supposed to do, and associated this blog with that effort, I did get a few comments from old friends. But I don't think I ever heard from anyone I didn't already know,
A Facebook page did absolutely nothing for "Manhattan Morning," which is arguably now gaining some historical relevance, in obscurity, because of the way Manhattan and retail in general is changing as a result of the pandemic and a related accelerated shift to online shopping. Who knows, perhaps "Manhattan Morning" will be "discovered" in that context -- before the culture from which it is in large part derived, literary Modernism, is totally "cancelled."
"Manhattan was really like that???"
If cancellation means I'm consigned to the same circle within some Dante-like inferno as James Joyce, T.S. Eliot and especially Virginia Woolf (among many others), so be it. Unlike "Ulysses," "Manhattan Morning" is so slim and the number of copies in circulation so small that when it is burned, it's unlikely to contribute significantly to climate change so I won't be charged with an additional offense.
Who is going to bring all this about? It's probably best not to be too specific about that. Those interested, however, can read publications such as the New York Times art sections to get a feel for where things are going.
Meanwhile I will continue to episodically blog out into what amounts to the great unknown. I've been rather inactive in recent months, but now have a couple of topics I feel like working up -- and plenty of time stuck at home in which to do it. Crank up the transmitter.
