This is nice, just a montage of Kate McGarrigle to one of her upbeat tunes, funky and vital. Would have been easy and obvious to choose something more melancholy, Youtube at its interactive best.
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A blogger died the other day, well, probably lots of them did but one of them was notable in this quadrant of cyberspace. Mr Mutley the Dog, Rob Chambers, 46, passed away in his sleep on Friday; no age, as we old people say, fearfully.
He was described as quirky and original and although I knew his name, I didn't know his output but I had a quick look last night and quirky was right, flights of whimsy, along the lines of Chase Me Ladies, I'm In The Cavalry. I intend no dismissal by that remark, no slight; making people smile, or laugh out loud is, I think, one of the nicest things one can do for the world. When my young friend, stanislav, was active, he used to make me laugh until I cried, and I know he made countless other people laugh, too, an odd, anarchy, his, barbed, didactic and mirthful; mr mutley's ouevre was milder, more wry and whimsical and people loved him for it.
The tributes at his site were largely moving and dignified, genuinely affectionate, most considered him a friend they had never met, some were just keen to grieve, May You Never-ing for all their worth; others have just closed their blogs for a few days as a mark of respect, a strange, new, alien ritual; the grafting-on, to the instant, the transitory, of ancient customs, antithetical, really, to the supposed newvalues of life in the the electronic village. Some of his readers had physically met Mr Mutley but many hadn't. How do you mourn those you don't know. And should you ? Is it, post-Diana, de rigeur, do we all remind ourselves, with every soul's passing, of John Donne's, no man is an island.....send not to ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee?
Mr Chambers had an eponymous blogdog, Mutley, who had passed away and this obviously endeared him to people with their own dogblokes; there must be thousands of dogblokes unaware of their global fame; everytime Buster disgraces himself I remind him that I can grass him up to Mrs Narcolept or Ms Lilith and they perhaps wouldn't be quite so pleased, then, to see his 'photos; makes no difference to him, being a blogdog, no matter how much of an honour I insist it is.
Mr Chambers wasn't one of those bloggers-for-cash, so despised by mr rantin rab, not a pathetic carpetbagger, like Mrs Dale of the cardigan emporium, down the street, not so much a forum, more an entree to midnight telly's dodgy celebrity. He was, instead, it seems, one of those to whom the internet gave both voice and audience, a double blessing and smiles all around.
