A note for Bill Hick’s fans, this isn’t a post about Bill may he R.I.P. (or rant and rail as he sees fit).
Klep (and others for that matter) questioned my tone the other day and my reply was that I wrote in my voice. I knew what I meant but was grasping for ways to illustrate my point.
That was until Monday while listening to a 2 hour long Joe Rogan Experience podcast when the subject of Bill Hicks came up.
Taking a dump
For those of you unaware of Bill Hicks he was a comedian from the U.S. bible belt with decidedly un-bible belt material.
One of the things they touched on in the podcast was Bill’s ability to clear the audience from a room.
Where some comedians would be pleasantly funny enough to maintain a room, others mediocre, but not so bad as to encourage you to leave your seat (pfft, it will be over soon), Bill cleared rooms.
You either loved or hated Bill’s style, his subject matter and his perspective.
The example in the podcast was him performing to a room of about 200 people. About 1/2 way through a 2 minute simulation of him “taking a dump” (there is a short version off the joke in the YouTube clip above), the majority of people got up and left the room.
What was left was about 50 audience and a handful of comedians laughing their heads off.
He was left with his true audience, his true believers. People to whom he didn’t have to make apologies, people that loved what he did.
Really there is only one comparison you can make between Bill and I (except that you may find either or both of us offensive).
He spoke with his voice.
I write with my voice.
I’m not alone in this, hopefully the majority of us that blog are writing in our voice, not a voice that panders to our perceived notion of what our readers want to read.
You start pandering to what you think your audience wants and you are left with nothing but Australian politics.
Boobs
Rivs is a writer that I have at times been in heated disagreement with. Many people find the pictures of semi-naked women that begin most of his posts offensive. I on the other hand squirm knowing he’s catching my attention with shemales (not there’s anything wrong with that). To be honest, I prefer that to scary real life shots of him…
However you feel about Rivs, he writes, he posts, in his voice. At the end of the day, while we may disagree on somethings, many things, I love his blogging voice and so I read him, skipping the odd post or statement because we have had those discussions in the past and agreed to disagree.
There have been many others that write in what I think of as a strong and occasionally unpalatable voice, Megan and Jong come immediately to mind, but there are many others.
I loved them too… I dearly loved them and will miss them till I am rolling in my grave burning from the fires of hell.
It’s not all about content
As a general rule I don’t care so much about the topic of a post. Guides may have me flick past, raid updates usually leave me dead bored, achievement post, even blog milestone posts often leave me hitting delete in my feed reader, even from my very favorite of bloggers.
What counts to me is the voice with which the post is written. I know I have often received comments along the lines of…
I don’t have a Mage, I hate the alliance (particularly Gnomes), I don’t PvP, in fact we have absolutely nothing in common. I read you because I like the way you write.
It’s the same for me when reading other’s posts.
- Too me wishy-washy is worse than badly written.
- Passive will make the most exciting moment for you, the most dull for me.
Writing from my black heart
Navimie is trying to tell me I write from my brain, but I know that while my brain may guide my fingers to type, it’s my heart that forms the words to be written.
I have spoken recently of LinkLove and LinkHate. Not of LinkLike and LinkDisagree. This is because I am passionate, my voice is passionate. It’s full of love and joy for all that is or could be good in the world, or it is filled with what pisses me off.
I’m not passive-aggressive in my writing. If I have a beef with you, you will know, here on the front page of my blog, not in the back rooms of twitter. But then it’s the same if I love you.
So when I speak of hate, I don’t mean hatred, I mean a strong passion of and maybe for disagreement. I mean I don’t take a maybe-yeah or a maybe-no position. If I say yes, I mean yes. If I say no, well you know how that turns out.
I know I clear feed readers. I know that there are people out there that dislike my voice, dislike my posts.
I also know that there are some, maybe only a few when all is said and done, that come to hear my voice whether it’s about my soggy cornflakes or destroying the Horde (my enemies, replace with yours).
Choice
In this world of choices, where for many the decision to get out of bed in the morning is the most daunting choice around, we all, you and I, have the choice whether to read or not read what another writes.
- You may choose to read me, or not.
- You may choose to agree with me, or not.
- You may choose to comment, to blog post a retort, or neither of the above.
- You may choose to love or to hate me, for one post or for all.
They are your choices, just as it is my choice to post in my voice.
I love Klep, we have been friends for a long time. Whether I have truly offended him or not. Whether he now hates me, or not. Whether he continues to read me, or not, we will both be true to ourselves for we have spoken and made choices.
The same is true for every reader that ever has or ever will pass by the Home of the Gnome.
Remember folks, my door is always open, either going or coming, it’s your choice (even the choice of slamming it on the way out).
Bill Hicks.
If you want to know more about Bill Hicks then a good place to start is The American: the Bill Hicks Story.
I cried through this more than I did through E.T. despite recent suggestions that E.T. and I might be involved in some kind of conspiracy, which may or may not involve some very reasonably priced Real Estate.
Gnomer and Out!
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
http://gnomeaggedon.net/2012/03/06/my-voice-your-voice-bill-hicks/
I am trying to write a response to this post while watching Glee as Santana tells her family about being a lesbian and a ditzy blonde wins class president over a gay singing hummingbird. It’s actually really hard to figure out exactly what I want to say. So I’ll just say this about your writing…
Maybe a great magnet pulls all souls towards truth, or maybe it is life itself that feeds wisdom to it’s youth.
Keep writing from the heart, and always keep your voice your own.
I also need to stop including YouTube clips… I lost over two hours just wandering through Bill Hicks clips… could have been anything, so I guess I was kinda focused, just forgot to put a limit on my watching before posting…
I used to skip blogs that looked like they were predominately about something I didn’t do, say healing. I later realized I was missing out on a lot, I read blogs because of the voice more than the content. I don’t even mind those nekkid pictures at A High Latency Life.
Still haven’t figured out how Navi gets me to read raid posts but I guess I just like the sound of her voice. I even read some blogs that talk about PvP, I know, can you believe it!
Of course you read PvP blogs.
Now you have your Dark Iron Gladiator’s Handbag you are unstoppable!
Shhh don’t tell Navi she has a great blogging voice, everyone has been telling her that lately and while it’s true, it might lead to multiple raid posts every day.
True dat. Navi has an awesome voice all her own and is very prolific… but she needs to write more about her own thoughts. That’s what we want!
Her other posts are good, but I want more of Navi’s thoughts out there to see.
Navi… tell us a story….
/signed
I think I know how to make happen too, we just need to use the word “challenge” somewhere… She can’t resist a challenge.
Navi… “we challenge you to”… Tell us a story…
I just wanted to say, “Thanks.”
It is because of you and BBB that I started blogging again. It is because of you that I posted my last few posts. (aka, they were personal achievement posts which I did b/c of that one person blasting achievements posts that you and BBB brought up).
I bring this up to say, “Thanks for writing in your voice. It is why I read you as well.”
Tim
p.s. I’m not leaving my wow blog address b/c I don’t wanna pimp it. I just wanted to say “thanks.”
I think I am right in that I would be speaking for Bear as well when I say I am honored that I have encouraged you to put pixels to screen.
I’d also love you to throw your link about some time, you never know, you might have a voice we would crave for, but only we would know that and only if we got to hear/see it.
You can call it pandering all you want, but what is the opposite of pandering? Unrepresentative tyranny and companies going bankrupt because they “manufactured with their voice rather than what people wanted to buy.”
Don’t worry! I’ll continue to read your blog, because without the darkness, there can be no light.
You are the light to my darkness, the honey to my bee, the mists to my pandering.
“You start pandering to what you think your audience wants and you are left with nothing but Australian politics.”
So… what happens if you write about Australian politics in your own voice? I think my last blog post might have broken something along those lines…
Oh thank god you wrote that & I’m slapping myself for my slow return to reading.
I’m pretty sure that you just captured my view on recent Aussie political events (admittedly without the profanity), one that I haven’t as yet seen articulated (and I’ve been looking).
You have not just captured my thoughts, but put made them coherent.
Thanks Gnomer! I can’t say profanity came into my thinking much but perhaps I’m just a bit jaded (in my slightly less years than yours) and tend to watch politics with a sense of amusement these days. Some things really do piss me off (immigration ‘policy’ being one of them), but the circus that is Australian politics and the trolls that it feeds (our media) just result in me laughing.
Gnomey thank you, to be included in a post with some of great names of this blogosphere, by one of the great names of this blogosphere I consider an honor.
I like to think I do have a distinct voice, and my job was never to bring enlightenment, but to entertain.
Like you said the people that get me….get me. Speaking of getting…I know someone who’s getting some love this Friday. LOL!
Do I need to provide the lube?
Who says chivalry is dead. pffft.
[...] gets all my love this day. He wrote a great post, and he not only gets me, he put me amongst some esteemed company. Give him some High Latency [...]