Bay Blogger Thursday

Before you started blogging, how did you express yourself?
I’ve been a diarist since I was 6 years old. I still have my original journals declaring the miracle of letters that I had written to God and how it had disappeared from my desk while I was in class. Journals upon journals, notebooks upon notebooks, scrap papers, drawings, and more notebooks. I didn’t start writing online until about 1994 when I discovered usenet newsgroups, where I made essays and diatribes about the benefits of Miso Soup and made my audience suffer through emo college angst poetry. I started writing online for IIStix, this asian american webzine in about 1997 and then began blogging shortly after that. Since I started writing online, I’ve had a great opportunity of developing a more confident and authentic voice in my writing both online and in print. I still keep personal journals though.

Why did you start blogging?
I was actually roped into blogging after a year of lurking in and reading other blogs. People within the RiceBowlJournals (an asian american blog community) encouraged me to write more often. I didn’t start actually using a personal publishing system like Blogger until Ernie of Little, Yellow, Different had me as a contestant on his infamous Survivorblog. Oy, was that a hoot and bootcamp for the manic world and drama associated with personal blogs.

You're a columnist in a nationwide magazine with a growing circulation -- how is writing for your blog different?
My dad reads my column in KoreAm Journal. Which means I can’t write too much about poontang or drunkenness. Not that I would write too much on my personal blog about poontang or drunkeness, of course. (cough cough)

We ask you these questions because you wrote a post about the lifecycle of blogs that really struck a chord. How did you feel about the response to that piece?
I tripped out. I had no expectation that the piece would resonate with so many people. It was translated and linked to from over 30 different countries. Who the hell should be reading my site in translation from cyrillic? That’s just weird.

Do you think that the new social push on the internet can help cross national and ethnic lines, especially on a local community level?
Yes and no. There’s this new cultural divide which has less to do with the haves and havenots so much as it has to do with the know and know-nots. Those that have access to a certain level of technology and those who don’t but have the passion for advocacy and activism. Living in SF I see how these are getting to the point of confluence but it still isn’t where it should be. I mean, SF is the birthplace of the UN and the future home for Star Trek Academy. I have hope that we’ll pull it together but it means that we all have to put in more effort for it.

You're holding an event in an arts space. Can you please give us some examples of the type of artistry we might expect from the assembled bloggers?
Well, my event is titled Lap-Pop! And it’s hosted at Locus Arts at 180 Capp street, the home of Kearny Street Workshop. Both Locus Arts and Kearny Street Workshop are outstanding Asian American arts organizations based in SF that provide venues, support, advocacy, and development of local Asian American Artists.

When I was asked to curate and coordinate this event, I struggled for a long time with what kind of event would appropriately bring the world of bloggers to a meatspace venue and not be completely pointed and laughed at by artistic echelons or heckled by hipsters. In the end, I said fuck with the expectations, let’s do something fricking new. My main focus is trying to bring down the perceptions of barriers between artists and bloggers.

Ernie of LYD and Glenda of Agendacide and Negative Waves are being pulled in as talented bloggers who have the opportunity of presenting their writing to a real life audience, this is something you don’t’ often get as a writer or blogger. Courtney is a talented photographer who will showcase her gorgeous photographs in a physical medium vs a online only medium. Robynn (nonogirl) is an extraordinarily artful radio personality and producer that brings the control and skill of traditional radio production to a podcasting medium and Annie Lin is a fantastic musician who has gained a great audience among bloggers and non-bloggers alike.

My hope for the evening is to really showcase some amazing APA voices in the blogosphere and the artscene and resolve the perception that they are diametrically opposed. The fact that the media frequently refers to the blogosphere (and I say that in air quotes) is predominantly white, straight, male, and techie is a bogus and myopic perception. Maybe this event will change some of those ideas. Oh, I’m also planning on some surprises. There will be improv challenges and perhaps a “Asian Parent Impersonation” smackdown. WWF style. At the very least, I expect Glenda & Ernie to bootyslap dance.

We have to admit, we're big fans, both online and in real life ("IRL"). What are your suggestions for bridging those worlds?
Authenticity and honesty in both worlds are dead seriously important. The more you think about it, the more you recognize that those worlds don’t need to be bridged so much as they need to be holistically unified by making sweet love down by the fire. I mean, seriously. Who you are in any circumstance — with family, with co-workers, with friends, with your audience, with lovers, and with strangers should always be with consistent integrity and care. When you really own that value and character, you live in only one world, and not multiple ones.

And what do I love most about San Francisco? I’m never bored. There’s always good food. And scintillating conversations with fascinating people well into the night. Even if you’ve run out of beer.