The idea that rock stars specifically and artists more generally should remind clouded behind a veil of mystery is fairly widely accepted. Being too available, it is held, inevitably leads to the demystification of a persona. The alluring rock god becomes normal. Thus, it seems like one must work fairly aggressively to manage and monitor their outward facing persona to ensure that it conforms with the appropriate amounts of mystery and intrigue.

At the same time, the internet and social web technology and platforms push us in the opposite direction. Blogs, Facebook, Twitter -- all work best when lots of content is created on a regular basis. Those tools then push that content out over the web, the information gets indexed, and popularity rises as Google and other search engines catalog and represent this personal information back to the world at large. The social web works best when people push themselves to share more, to articulate more, to self-publish <i>more</i>.

Of course, it's easy to use these tools to lie. To create a persona that doesn't correlate to reality and that is a fabulization of qualities that the creator or artist sees as being interesting, relevant, popular or important.

It's just that it's very difficult to maintain. For me, personally, I've slowly been replacing artifice with reality and instead concentrating on super reality which means content built out of honesty while still trying to remain relevant.

I wonder whether a blog or self-publishing on the web is self-defeating for a musician that is attempting to hide behind phrases, words, melodies, slow movements of strings. But the stronger part of me posits that you can't go home again. And that the notion of an artificial person, constructed by a machine, is the very idea and the underpinning against which social communication tools on the internet are struggling.

Put another way: You don't think my music sucks if I write about it do you?

I was born a few years ago on this day, July 19th. Thanks Mom and Dad. It's been fun so far.