Time will Tell, Part One
“There is a new world being formed, we just don’t know what it is yet.”
Vaclav Havel published this idea quite a few years ago.
Can we see it now? Is it here? Do blogs replace literature? Would a young Faulkner write a zine? Will there and should there ever be another Faulkner like presence in midst, in our minds, in our hearts and consciousness?
When, years ago, the painter Guy Russell, tried to explain to me what a web site was, I kept asking “is it permanent?”
What I actually meant was can you keep it? Like a book? Will all the work and time spent on creating something in a website, pictures or words or layouts, survive? Is it permanent?
The “test of time” has been like a great sieve for past works. Those works of literature and art worth surviving tend to survive – and in many, but not all cases, we still enjoy them.
So, in this new world that we are probably now in, and I think, that we helped to create, “is it permanent?” Will some zines survive because they are better than
all the others? Will some blogs? Some websites?
Will the great works survive the infinite miles of crap flying around in cyber space?
Are the new world that is emerging, and the concept of greatness, compatible?
As I write this I am listening to one of Beethoven’s Late Quartets. Is there a website, or a blog out there that millions will want to see or read in another two centuries?
Time will Tell.
Bleak Beauty Blog 
These are good questions. I wonder if people asked the same about folk troubodoors who sang songs from memory? Which is also to say that history is good at preserving things that preserve well. Writing and sculpture tend to stick around, but maybe there are great dances and performances we will never hear of because they lacked a solid substance or a written record.
>?<
Billy George McCune emerged from Death Row, and 25 years in the TDC. And what did he do? He sang songs, including his “My Last Mile” which were awesome in their power. McCune’s voice was preserved (by me with a small quality recorder) and eventually reached a widening audience. McCune was Scotch/Irish and part American Indian, and it has been agreed he is in the tradition (its “in his blood”) of the Irish troubadours. So those great works are preserved, because they are great. This was shown many times by Harry Smith’s remarkable collections and bibliography of American folk music.