This week, we looked at the concept of a beginning, middle and end in terms of online networks and traditional media forms such as books.  When we look at a book, we know intuitively that we begin reading on the very first page, top to bottom, left to right.  This is the way the Western world has been brought up.  And, yet we can look at this concept in foreign countries and still see a symmetry between us all.  We all believe there is a place to start and a place to end, and that they happen in this order.  Whether the book is read back to front, right to left, we have a sense of how it is read embedded in the society in which we live, learn and play.

In saying this, all cultures have a similar thought process on books.  Yes, they are there to be read.  And secondly, there is an order in which to read them.

My question from the symposium is: can we say the same for modern media forms such as blogs?

Our lecturer Adrian tended to say that no, you cannot put the same restrictions you would on how you would read a book on how you would read a blogs.

Even though one can support this notion by explaining that the interweb and blogs can be made to reflect hypertexts, which draw information from many different sources, and form a network of pathways to information.  That essentially, blogs cannot be measured with a beginning, middle and end because they are non-linear.

But, if we look around, the world is really only starting to change the format of what we see in technology platforms now.  Up until 2013 – 14 we could still look at the average webpage, blog and social media form and see at least a beginning and an end.  It is with new interfaces and the integration of tablets and more tangible technological platforms, that this sense of linearity has been challenged and is changing.

To whom it may concern,

In response to your advertisement in this year’s sixth edition of ‘Folly’, Australia’s ‘number one magazine for teenage girls’, is my application for the position that has been …well… left unoccupied by some trick of faith or, even worse, by the presence of requited love (that romanticized, rose-coloured illusion which we advertisers love to implant in the minds of young, hopeful, socially awkward teenage girls, exploiting their insecurities but boosting profit margins. The ‘So you like him, here’s 3 easy steps to get him!’ that is guaranteed to ensure sales are top notch.)

Let me now outline my extensive resume. To begin, my eligible knowledge of an expansive array of prodigious dwellings, which are, more often than not, disguised by tattered and dilapidated coverings and facades. Places that illustrate all the more, my eligibility to this position, as no prospective ghost can live on without being heavily influenced by the undercurrent of impermanence.

The rooms which many of us girls could call own second home…or rather, thanks to the prominance of mirrors that have been erratically plastered onto spare, cold, concrete space, own first home. The acidic, citrus scent, which calls out to our two-dimensional generation to come forth, to congregate, to check that we are still, in fact, imperfect and inadequate. Looking into those mirrors, which hold a muggy beige sticky mask smudged onto them, a mixture of half of a decade’s many foundations (which are four shades darker than our skin), because, every one needs a bronze face: a ‘happy’ face to present to the world. And then, after we have made sure that our hair is still the wrong colour, that our lips still need plumping and following being shocked at two meagre salty sweat patches below each armpit which are presenting themselves like a disease on our new Chanel ‘chemise’, we delicately click our heels along the sullied peach tiles into a lonely metre-wide cubicle.

The door closes revealing a score of jagged contours from the etching of metal hair-pins and pens of names and numbers now gone and long disconnected. Reminders of the absence of any ephemeral glimpse of either truth or heaven.

In addition, I must state that whilst out in the field, adding to my practical qualifications, I have sat in many different circles (spheres are far too three dimensional for this position!) Furthermore, each, all sharing the same intention of discussion – whether it be the obsession with camouflaging themselves in a pixelated, concentrated coloured fantasy inside a screen, their natural pheromones with falsified scents or with masks of lipsticks and eye shadows, in case Mr X realised it was really me…her! I have sat on warm, uneven asphalt and listened to gossip entirely based around ‘her dress’, ‘that frizz’, ‘that beep’. And I, too, have devoured this mouth-watering treat: the chance to label someone else, ha! To tell them who they should be, after all, there is no such thing as natural identity.

Society implores us not to be a participant but an interested observer to the narrative that is who we are destined to become right before our eyes.

I have eaten the most tasteless sushi in all of Sydney, the seaweed like rough, brittle sandpaper caressing, or should I say exfoliating my mouth, encasing what is cleverly advertised as lean chicken but that is neither lean nor chicken. I have shared a mouthful of ‘melancholy bitters’, realistic gloom and tragedy with swarms of rumour-hungry despondent.

In powerful, money-hungry conversations with ‘vacant-eyed’ members of the haut monde, my own monotonous, shallow ghost apprentice has had practice in performing flawless confidence in tête-à-tête regarding fuel prices and shares. Because, we all know that money conveys power, which goes hand in hand with success, which subsequently embraces happiness. A shallow happiness, which has lead to countless suicides and manic depression, but happiness all the same, as fleeting as it may have been.

I suspect you might agree that in today’s world that distant happiness of which the old guys speak, remains an elusive and abstract notion.

My whole life has told me so much about the deep, jejune, plunging shallowness of this very letter and this whole eternity in a world masked by adherent, branded cling wrap which traps us and holds us back from that looming happiness which features in the smiles and beauty in so many films, myths, advertisements and… other forms of media which I best not discuss here…

Although I do sometimes catch my fingers running free along the coffee-stained ivory keys of my father’s cob-web covered grand piano, and my vocal chords vibrating with a radiant hum, I pull myself away, knowing that this job, this opportunity to tick off the greatest achievement of my banal life is more important to me than a passion… than a dream… inspiration to find whatever those ‘lovers’ are dreaming about.

In closure, I wish to express my deepest longing for this job, and assure that, if I am to prove successful in this application that I will be most satisfied in any position you so wish to kindly offer me. And, that my efforts will be to forever support the galvanisation of generations to come with phantasms of happiness; depriving them of selfhood with gloomy, fallacious schemes. But, please keep in mind, that being by nature, I am still, but a mere apprentice.

For, only You death can set my spirit free forever…

… that is, if I don’t experience faith or requited love first.