What’s the “b” in “blogging”? Anyone remember? I’ll give you a minute……..
[And by the way, frankly, I have no list of quick tips or life hacks today.
Just indulgence in a penchant for metaphor for those similarly inclined!]
(Meanwhile) Erection of the maypole
It’s spring at last. And when I see the may-flower blossoming and the hedgerows thickening I think of carefree bygone days when European villages held their community May Day celebrations . There was a really “sticky” song I used to sing at primary school at just this time of year “Sing a Song of Maytime”.
Accompanied by such songs, on many a village green, an ancient rite of celebration of the coming of spring unfolded. Draped with coloured ribbons, coupled boys and girls would dance around the hub. Intertwining the ribbons in an elaborate dance, the shortening ribbons tightly wound around the pole and the Sunday best dancers finally gathered fast at its foot.
Back to my first point though.
About blogging.
You probably had to stop and think didn’t you? That’s it, Weblog was ultimately shortened to blog. Not so hard to work out really. How many other words, even habits, attitudes or mind sets do we currently use or follow that have a long forgotten significance? Relevance badly in need of refreshing.
Blogging…and maypoles?
Has anyone even witnessed maypole dancing in the last decade or two?
Just imagine.
The intricacy of a pre-rehearsed and scripted pattern played out around a circular human loom! Not one foot wrong, not one ducking or weaving to the left instead of the right.
Remarkable but increasingly restrictive
That was how we once understood the brain! As it aged, it decayed and if injured there was loss of function and disability. We thought our intellectual fate was tightly woven in terms of what each physical region was responsible for. We believed it was hard wired instead of pliable.
So what does blogging have to do with dancing the maypole?
Well I promised to come back to the idea of neuroplasticity last time I posted.
It is a rapidly emerging field of science and medicine in which we now barely recognise the scope and potential of once simplistically mapped brain anatomy and function. The power of our brains to evolve and adapt to a new demand is known now to be extraordinarily in excess of what we once thought.
That’s where I draw the metaphor of blogging as maypole dancing.
As a blogger I set out with a tight idea like a towering brightly striped pole that I will raise with a flourish and expect to draw some attention. Especially as the ‘dancers’ take their position and each of the gathering tribe pick up their own “thread”. However, even before it is published, the concept starts to loosen and unravel in my own hands. It bears little reference to the original idea. Now it begins to offer up numerous and intersecting patterns and unfolding spiralling circumferences. How can I stop at 500 words? It is alive; it has the plasticity of a growing idea, a theory or a grand design.
I let it speak to the world.
Even then it is unfinished. Preserved In all its incompleteness like the dismantled maypole and streaming ribbons, it is housed within its category or genre.
Then You take action. You comment or inspire me further!
This conversation is for the pure joy of creation. It is a picture of our trusty brain in a new situation. One in which you didn’t first have to know how to do it! Connections form and grow, there is emerging collateral and adaptation.
You watch, you comment, you do, you learn! You evolve.
The maypole is a picture of the intertwined World Wide Web(log).
It is a rite of celebration of a new idea that inspires and begs your participation.
It is a beautiful dance to behold and a sheer discipline to create.
Why not pick up a ribbon, keep it taut and step into the endless possibilities and patterns that creative thinkers love to play with? We will never exhaust them. The connections are infinite.
Please join the dance.
I’ll be chatting about my story This Monday
Photo Credit: <a href=”https://www.flickr.com/photos/32531750@N04/4581295146/”>leavesandfeathers</a> via <a href=”http://compfight.com”>Compfight</a> <a href=”https://www.flickr.com/help/general/#147″>cc</a>
Disentangling Genius 