WOEBOT

Please allow me to introduce myself.

Now that Luka has discussed his position a bit, I thought I'd take the opportunity to fill you in on where my head's at. To file a kind of half-term report if you like. I'll try and be brief.

I was really flattered by the recent Wire thing. Less for where it was and for it's scale (let's be honest a few lines in the back of a jazz mag) than for who'd written it. I've had "glowing" press before for other of my projects and I'm still no nearer to converting any "talent" I have into money to buy Lulu a proper rattle. That makes me view publicity with suspicion. For the record my stats have only marginally improved since that piece, though I did score 1,000 downloads in one day for that last mix.

Which brings me to my next point. "1,000 downloads! Gee that's quite alot Matt, you must've got a fair few emails!" 2 actually. That's sad. And I've not enjoyed the recent scraps. And the nerdosphere can get quite claustrophobic. I'm under no illusion that I'd be an even bigger fool (than I already am) if I expected ANYTHING AT ALL for doing this blog. As Kodwo Eshun pointed out it's a gift economy. The act of blogging is effectively one of potlach.

On the other hand it serves to amuse me enormously. I've made some first class "mates-for-life"** who I couldn't have hooked up without it. I've had the opportunity to go head-to-head with the great thinkers. I've got a micro-job out of it (review gig). My wife thinks it's good for me too, which might come as a surprise to Simon, who's always gently chastening me for wasting time on it. Apparently I'm better humored, though she views me laughing at my private jokes with a mixture of infuriation and tenderness.

My animation course has now finished. I always scoff when I hear Luka on my case for writing about music (or whatever the hell it is I do here) when I should be doing comics. I'm actually drawing all day most of the time. Right now I'm pretty exhausted, less by the blog than by balancing college, work (which has been OK) and looking after the wife and baby. I think I'm a pretty dedicated father. Where do I find the time? Er, well I don't watch TV and I don't socialise much. Don't worry I'm not about to start on the details of my personal hygiene. There is a chance I might get a job off this course, big open day on Friday. If not, well there are plenty of other things in the pipeline.

I'm definitely going to be ploughing on to complete a year on this. You'll probably guess by the density of what I'm putting out (something The Wire piece has made me more concious of...wouldn't it be nice to prattle and link) that I'm not going to be able to sustain it forever. Well that was never the plan. It's January 11th 2004 or bust. Thanks for dropping by. I hope you enjoy it. Stay tuned for some more fantastic high jinx. There's some mutha's yet to come.

Posted by Woebot at September 3, 2003 09:20 AM