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                              >> "Text Files" <<
                                 by -> Darwin

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        It's been said that music/art/poetry is the soul exiting itself in
hollow places. I'm not quite sure where it was said, but it certainly was,
and it's certainly true.  What then, are text files?

        Text files are computer words... computer art.  Are there any places
hollower than computers?  Is there any correspondance more false than email?
We've given up handwriting, we've given up the scrawl of an upset
obsessive... we've chosen letters.  Perhaps we haven't chosen, but it
certainly hasn't been thrust on us.  Nobody told people to start writing text
files, they just did.  Not because they had something to say, but because the
time demanded it.  Because computers require a certain soul quotient.  A
fraction of a life.  Have you ever sat down at a business computer or a
computer that's never been used by anyone?  I don't mean a new computer, I
mean one of those computers that might as well be any other computer sold at
radio shack.  Have you felt its relief when you created a text file that had
your friends phone number in it?

        That's the genesis of text, I think. The capture of a fractional soul
by a machine.  Not every machine captures it, and not every person has it to
give.

        Is there anything more useless than text files?  More anonymous, more
invisible?  Even crummy zines about indie-pop have subscribers... text files
don't even have that.  They just appear, and people read them.  Text is
automatic, its the soul shoving itself into the nearest receptacle.  This is
because the lives of those who write text have been framed in a certain
surround.  They are not satisfied, but can't take a "regular" way out of it.
Whether they're anti-social or differently social or just like computers,
they've made a choice.  They've chosed to be ignored, because nobody really
cares about computer people.  Computer lives are very rarely important to
anybody.

        Perhaps that is what the truly great text writers accomplish.  They
give computers life.  Their computers give them life.  They tread the line
between angsty youth writing self-depricating garbage and professionals.
They don't have any hopes of being published, any hopes of being famous, but
they ACT like they are.  And, somehow, they are famous.  The text file writer
is a writer and is simultaneously not a writer.  What is a text file but the
writer?  The text file writer is fundamentally unfulfilled, and fundamentally
unfulfilled with being unfulfilled.  He senses that there is something in the
world which is beauty, which can be glimpsed.  He may or may not realize it
can not be grasped.  He will keep trying.

        The true art of the text file is tone of voice.  Tone of voice makes
all art, but especially one where there is no tone, and there is no voice.
When any musical great sings, and sings like he means it.. That is the soul
of art.  That's why Bush is garbage, no matter how hard he yells.  Because,
like so much self-published angst crap, it's just paying lip service to the
reality of fear of life.  Now, this is not to say that there isn't bad text,
in fact, there's a lot of it.  But, the truly good text... is liberated by
the fact that it is free.  There is no charge, there is no gain, there is,
ultimately, nothing created or destroyed.  There is only humanity.

        Good text files say it like they mean it.

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    * (c) HoE publications.  HoE #131 -- written by Darwin -- 11/5/97 *
