I’m prone to constant exploration and evaluation of why I do anything, and this blog is not exempt from that, in fact no area of my life is. I think it’s a healthy analysis and keeps your work’s value in focus and in check. The focus of this blog has changed since I started it nearly a year ago. Originally, my intention was to write about electronic communications, and the like, but your feedback, and the stats of the pages visited, showed me that many more people were checking out my creative works, particularly sound and music composition, but also video, design and my writings, I began to shift away towards those things. In the course of the last few months my poetry, which hasn’t really seen the light of day in nearly 15 years, started to take center stage. I’ve always written poetry, and my musical works have almost certainly always had a poetic quality to them, in fact, I often refer to my works as tone poems, works of sound unto themselves, with the title framing the sound a bit.
So this gets me down to the brass tacks: Why publish?
I can be very philosophical, but much philosophy ends up being nothing more than an intellectual dog/tail chase, but usually some awareness, some peace, some new understanding arises from that pursuit. Many times I’ve tried to figure out the answer to the question “why publish?”. There are many answers. Some are driven by the writer’s need for external gratification, some are driven by the need to get their name out, some are driven by content alone. Certainly, I’ve fallen into all categories at one time or another, but I’m pleased to say that these days I’m driven by content alone.
I feel like I’m a conduit for something greater than myself, call it God, the universe, the Source, the Tao, the cosmos whatever, but in many ways, in my purest expression of myself or my source energy, the self untainted by social and familial conditioning. I feel like this is where the work that’s created under the name and associated with the meat suit “matt borghi” comes from. Looking at words like inspiration, meaning “in spirit” only serves to support this fact, and as Ricky Skaggs said at a concert once: “Who am I argue with a download from the throne?” Of course, he meant the throne of Christ, but beyond the words, religious traditions, etc… that is the bottom line. Who am I to get in the way of the flow of source energy?
I publish here on this blog to share the work that comes through me. There are many artists, writers, composers, etc… who influenced me, and as the Buddhist Koan asks “If a tree falls in the woods and there’s nobody around to hear it, does it make a sound?” Surely, we can’t know for sure, because we’re not there, but at the same time with no witness, there’s surely no sound – and if all of those that inspired me decided to live the reclusive life, away from the maddening crowd, and not share then it would be a different world indeed. So surely, all of you readers, friends, family and the like bear witness to this work, take it, use it, and hopefully be inspired by it.
I am so very lucky and grateful to have the means of publishing, literally, at my fingertips; we’re all so lucky to have this. I think of Guttenberg slaving over his Bible, or masses of scribes writing down the history of the world, and having it subsequently burn at the Library of Alexandria, but right here, right now, for better or for worse, in these changing times, there’s next to no separation between inspiration, content and publication.
So the answer to the question of why publish becomes a simple one: I publish because I value sharing, and to take knowledge, experience and wisdom from others, without sharing my own, in a cosmic sense, just doesn’t feel right.
