The Maiden Voyage

Well, here I am. I have officially joined the blogosphere. And if you're wondering what took me so long, the truth is I have no idea. Maybe I just spent a little too much of my free time on social networking; maybe I just wrote myself out on professional work and didn't have enough left over to share with the world for free. But I don't think either of those answers really count for much. The truth of the matter is that I simply wasn't "there" yet--but I'm There now.

And where, you may ask, is There? Especially since you've been gone all this time without actually leaving? All joking aside, I think that's the key: it took me until now to embrace all the implications of our New Media Age--or at least some of them, the ones that have attached themselves to my particular part of the shore as the rest have continued on down the stream--and now that I've taken them and made them mine, I want to talk about them. It's really as simple as that. (Well, maybe not so simple. But it's a start.) Most of what I write and post here will involve those aspects of ourselves and our society which revolve around communication. And since, as Camus pointed out, we are a conversation, I suspect I'll have a lot to say. I hope you find it as interesting in the reception as it is in the broadcast.

One final note in this quick introduction: I've chosen "The Basement Notes" as the name of my blog as a conscious nod (and wink, too) at both Bob Dylan and the Band (for an album I have always loved) and Dostoyevsky (who, I should mention, was nodding and winking through Notes from Underground all along). Much of what our friend Fyodor had to say about the human condition in that short novel--one of my favorites--had to do with the failures and shortcomings of the rational mind, the fear of love and intimacy, and the marriage of self-contempt with oversensitivity, both in the individual and in society as a whole. These issues have never been more profound nor more central to the natural human quest for authenticity than they are today, and they form the framework of my thinking, as well as informing that thinking with what I hope is an adequate dose of compassion and recognition of the truth in its deepest and most universal forms. We live in a time of remarkable challenge and remarkable opportunity, as all people throughout history ever have. But I can think of no other time when the challenges and opportunities have each had such a powerful sense of finality. We are at some kind of crossroads, one that can lead to doom and despair on the one hand, or evolution and achievement on the other. Which path we choose will depend on how we see it, and how we see it will depend on how we say it. So I guess it's now the time because the time is now, and I'm here because we're There. For real.