M is for Myg

Just a shot from DJ keTchUp’s set at Clockwork last night. Here we’ve got the beguiling Romana Wei, mid groove. I took a bunch of shots, but to be honest my SL photography skills sucketh from lack of practice. I wanted to try to capture the crowd of folks who came out, and since my camera didn’t do the job I’ll do some shout outs: Sophrosyne, Galatea, Sable, Romana, JellyBean, Hawksrock, Akasha, Xaxoqual, Esteban, GoSpeed, Chestnut (who features much better photos of the night than I took), Zha, and damn, a few new faces whose names I am forgetting. Which is why I personally could never be mayor of Topgol.

Alex and I have been talking about what to do and where to go with our Second Lives. We’ve been pretty consumed in our real flesh begotten lives for awhile now, but we’ve missed our friends in SL a lot. We’d like to get the club up and running again, but for me it’s become real important that I don’t feel obligated to be there every night it’s open. My last few months in SL before I took a break all I did was host at the club. I enjoy it, but not when it’s all I do in SL. It burns you out like anything else done repetitively enough for no pay.

It’s interesting to contemplate these things from the standpoint of a long hiatus. When we first got into SL, it was all consuming for us. We were so riveted by the possibilities and the creative potential and the social aspects. We saw and still do see such enormous potential for Second Life. But now that we’re a little older and a bit busier, it’s a challenge to figure out where to fit it into the whole of our lives. It’s not easy to be a part timer in SL in some ways. I remember how easy it was to spend hours and hours and hours and hours and…well that can’t happen anymore.

What can happen in far less hours logged on a week? I guess that’s what we’ll be finding out. Stay tuned…

It’s summer time and what says summer more than condiments? That’s right, I, dj keTchUp, return tonight to lay down the retro wax and hot trax at Clockwork, 6 p.m. SL time. Okay, I know I’m wearing a jacket in that pic and it’s hot as fuck-all outside these days, but I liked it and forgot it was in my invy, and goddamn if it ain’t SecondLife, I can wear whatever I damn well please. Este’s trying to convince me that weather is some kind of jedi mind trick anyway. So I set the AC to 65 degrees in the club, cranked the sound system to 140db spinning some bleak 80s tracks, and started pouring scotch while imagining the sweet cool breezes of November.

Those of you still hooked on summer can show up in whatever you like and if you get cold, we’ll warm you up or you can party naked on the rooftop.Those of us inside can wax poetic about powder and argue skis vs boards. Ah, who am I kidding, I’ll prolly be on the roof as well, unless I can get someone to clean up that mess downstairs.

Remember, 6 p.m., Clockwork, Topgol. Hours of sonic indulgence from retro rock to indie punk electroshock. There’ll be blogrock, spitpop, and fraggle rock. Even tiptop, slopshop, and cockjock. You might even hear the latest underground daNceYC mix, Detroit trips, and psychotronicslaveraves from the desert ships. Who knows? I might even break out the grill and get the Jerseycue going for all my friends. See you there.

They were shocked I’d come back so quickly, my old fiends, and to be honest, so was I. But there I was, trying to get around Topgol to see what was still what. I managed to check out a few of my old favorite landmarks, and sure enough they still worked. That was a relief. Though I’d forgotten the command to tp home, and indeed had forgotten where home was.

The city has changed, and it hasn’t. The towering spots still jet from the Clockwork roof, backed by an eclectic digital city. The water tower still stands idly in the center of our land, waiting for someone to hatch some kind of wayward scheme within. And old friends still lurk in electric ghettos, welcoming new souls into our world. And welcoming old souls back.

We’d just returned from our vacation and my head was splitting, but he bugged me and bugged me and bugged me and so I did it. I logged on. He was Alex, and he’d gotten the urge real bad. So in he went, and then a little while later, in I went too.

I was fumbling at the keyboard. Couldn’t type as fast as I once could. Couldn’t exactly remember my dance moves, nor how to find my favorite outfits in inventory. For once I didn’t bother to change clothes. I could barely maintain the assorted IMs and local chat that commanded more of my attention than I give to paying clients on my best days.

But then I like a challenge.

I can see a lot has changed since I was last on. I don’t think I’ve spent any kind of actual time in since the early or mid-spring. And I know I’m not the only one who’s been in digital crisis. All kinds of things have been up in the air. The Mean Girls  are finally packing it in. (And by the way, it seems I’ve been fired from the Mean Girls, though I only noticed it today when I went there and saw my name and link gone. But it’s just as well since, as I just mentioned, I only noticed I was ousted today, meaning I haven’t even been visiting the blog or anybody elses save this one once in awhile…) You can view the web in SL now, they tell me. Sable has a boyfriend! Romana has created a sex den with SL’s largest sex bed (link to follow). And you can make your lips move when you talk, if you know how. I mean, that’s some serious change.

But I think I’m ready.

Alex returns as DJ keTchUp this Thursday, you know where, at Clockwork. I think he said 6pm SL time, and yeah, I’ll be back with more and a reminder before then.

I’d throw you the SLURLs, but I forget how. Give me a few days, k?

It’s a funny thing when you find that some of your miserable ways in the flesh find their way into your more perfect, less dimensional you. Yet that’s exactly what’s happened.

I wandered back into Topgol tonight, but just for a few minutes. I didn’t have much time but I felt pulled to be there again. It’d been weeks. I’d become the stranger, once and for all.

It felt good hitting the pavement, seeing the town from the street again. It was empty as usual. I wondered about my old friends. Sable, Romana, Esteban. Do they still meet on the corner and gab with the passersby like we once did?

It’s a funny thing to pull back from your life, no matter from which life you find yourself in retreat. It’s not like it’s the thing you planned to have happen. It’s not like you don’t question why it’s happened. But it’s not like you find yourself able to just jump back in where you left off. There’s a certain amount of starting over. And that’s a little intimidating, to be honest.

You’ve got to know it’s not that I found something better to do with my time. It’s not that I lost interest or moved on. It’s something else.

You’ve got to know that I still believe in the great digital expansion of consciousness and connectedness of our time. I still believe in the platform, though I wish it’d hurry up and get better enough not to cause me so much lag. I don’t miss the lag.

I still believe in the love and the friendships I found and I believe you can and will find friends and love and good times there that can be as real or as distant as you ever need them to be. That’s remarkable, if you think about it.

And I still believe I’ll be back.

Hey I haven’t forgotten. I swear. It’s just a thing these days. I miss you and I miss this blog and all of it.

Alex’s last day of class forever is tomorrow.

Keep the light on for us.

love,

myg

A new viewer. I have to admit I don’t know you anymore. Is it me? Where once I saw a person, now I just see fragments. Which makes me wonder what you see. The same Esteban Moody you saw before or just the wreckage of evolution? Eyeball-machine connected to perception-machine connected to ideology-machine all squishing away in there like clockwork? Just bouncing around like billiard balls you and me and the rest? I take a stone from the left pocket of my great-coat. I watch the evening news and it makes me angry. Someone is calling on the telephone.

This is the latest news in science. As usual, a hundred years behind. I saw a doe and her fawns still behind the trees, then they silently bounded out of sight. The point is that it
doesn’t bother me in the least. Quite frankly, it’s reassuring to see the rest of the world finally getting it. Look, that old way of thinking was just getting in the way, like you were Captain Kirk sitting on the bridge of the Enterprise in your head barking orders at Sulu to make the arm and the hand move to pick up a glass of water and telling Spock to finish up those budget reports for Wednesday? Remember how you were always tuning into the evil Kirk or fighting the you from another dimension or switching bodies with that chick? Well, it turns out that was the real you all along.

In here, we’re cool with that. Some days I have the head of a giant rabbit. I change the color of my skin. We’ve always been cool with that. The philosophy of it, the psychology, the epistemology — you know, the whole enchilada.

So why you gotta make me buy a new graphics card? Oh noes!

Jelly wrote about it today and it got me thinking. Why haven’t I been going into Second Life?

Quite honestly, I’ve had a lot of other stuff I’ve had to do and have wanted to do. Some personal, some professional, and some other. 

I’ve been working a lot. And strangely with the onset of daylight savings time, I’ve been a lot more interested in my work. That’s a good thing because for most of the winter I’d been really depressed about my work life. I recently stopped having clinical cases and instead I’ve been wrapping my brain around environments (real, physical and interpersonal ones) and trying to understand why they make us do the things we do. I don’t know where I’ll go from here, but I’m not uncomfortably bored and unchallenged where I am at the moment, and that’s really important. Never underestimate the power of a little sun.

I’ve been writing my novel again, and that’s where a lot of my creative energy has been. Blogging here at M is for Myg has taught me that I can write consistently in short spurts. So I set the goal to write two pages a day on my novel, and I’ve been really good at sticking to it. Two pages may not sound like much, but if I stay on this schedule I’ll have my first draft done in May. That excites me like I can’t even tell you. I’ve been working on this novel since 2004!

I’ve also been obsessing about politics. I have traded my SL addiction for a compulsive Dailykos habit. If you’re not a rabid progressive who thinks Barack Obama is the only obvious choice for president, then don’t even bother going there. Unless you’re on the fence and want to be convinced. Or want to argue and get a royal smack down.

One last thing.  I didn’t make a big deal out of it, but last Friday was M is for Myg’s 1st birthday. I am really proud of that and it wouldn’t be possible without the most excellent contributions from Esteban Moody, Sable Slade and Rain Laval, Xaxoqual Mandelbrot, Alex Burgess (remember him?), and in the way back of this blog, Vanny Richez and Lisa Takao.

It sure as hell wouldn’t still be here if it wasn’t for those of you who continue to read it. I just want to say thanks for that. It’s hard to explain how much that means to me, but let me put it like this.

Good blogging requires a writer to commit a piece of themselves, to surrender it publicly to the scrutiny and criticism of anyone on earth with a computer. It’s a powerful act, and not one devoid of intellectual and emotional consequences, however trivial the subject matter may appear. These blogs contain our ideas, and what are we if not ideas and feelings?

That’s why Second Life is so amazing to me still. You are almost purely an idea there, with your physical package stripped away and instead, represented by an image of mostly your own mind’s creation.

When you come and participate in M is for Myg as a reader or commenter, you let me and my friends know that on some level our ideas – we – matter. Even when you disagree with us or don’t like us.

Thanks for that. I needed it.

Love,
Myg