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hey everybody

Originally Published: January 08, 2010

I froze up pretty hard in the face of this blog. I read them all the time but this is the first one I’ve written. I keep a journal, but I keep it to myself, and this one is supposed to be public, supposed to be given away, whether anyone wants it or not, because even if you read it you might not want it, and I didn’t know if I could pull off being out in the open without showing out or showing off. Actually, I know I can’t do it without doing both of those things which, when it’s just between me and my computer makes me the happy genius of my household but here might make me some special kind of fool. I don’t even know what to do with this at the level of storage (which presupposes that even though this is supposed to go everywhere, in a kind of absolute dispersal and diffusion, it’s also supposed to go somewhere, so that it can be kept, insofar as it’s being kept). Should I fold, or cut and paste, this into my regular journal or let it stand alone? Is this stuff the same as that stuff, which includes book lists, grocery lists, pieces of poems, anti-Obama rants and rants against the people who still love him and the people who still hate him, appointments, ideas for classes, ideas on classes, notes on sets, musings on groups, Lorenzo’s broken codes, topological drawings, silly pteranodons and Julian’s baby blues? Anyway, I’m all into the idea of keeping something public—not, to be more precise, of giving something away, but of keeping something that is (and already isn't) mine in common--open access to the point of sourcelessness and beyond, on the other side of messing up what I thought I knew about “mine” and “isn't mine,” of what I thought I knew about inner and outer depths, of what I thought I knew about value or values or the valuable in thinking and writing. I imagine that most folks who are reading this have already thought through all of this but I am a latecomer. Anyway, I don’t plan to remain all meta-bloggish, but I do have a plan, partly because I don’t think I could go on—or because I would, in fact, go on just like this—without one. Still, it seemed appropriate to start off with some thoughts on what I’m supposed to be doing here. So, the public/private thing, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, two questions: Is there a relation between thought, or between poetry, or between thought and poetry, and idle chatter (or static or murmur or drowned breathing)? Can there be sound (or, deeper still, noise) in thinking or is sound thinking silent, unmusical, the sharp, pure, bracing signal, disruptive of any tendency towards dance or flight or song or troubled sleep? Am I supposed to be trying to be wise? Am I supposed to be trying to play? I’m hoping that I can get at some of this by telling you about what happens over the next few months while I am hanging with my son, Lorenzo, and his friends at kindergarten and with the students of my experimental black poetry class, which this semester is built around trying to read M. NourbeSe Philip’s amazing poem Zong! Next time I’ll fill you in a bit more on the plan (and I promise to keep it short).

Fred Moten is a professor of performance studies and comparative literature at New York University concerned...

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