Northern Overexposure

Welcome to Northern Overexposure. This website is a creative outlet for me to explore the cyber highways and byways of Web 2.0 in relative anonymity. However, I believe that, as an ethical matter, people should be personally responsible for their public representations and so I am attaching my photograph but not my name. The reasons for this is contained in Emily Dickinson’s poem above.

I superimposed Oscar Peterson’s  composition from Stan Getz and the Oscar Peterson trio entitled, “I’m Glad There Is You” overtop of the poem. I selected this piece because both the title and mood of the song fit the text. Dickinson’s poem is not an expression of low self-esteem but of sublime humility.  It is in our nothingness that we reach out for relationships that are not based of the kinds of performances we all enact in the various stages and theaters of our lives (i.e. being “somebody”) but instead based on the raw human need for genuine connection and love.

Andy Warhol once said that in the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes. Emily Dickinson was way ahead of the curve in this regard. She took the opposite position. The craving for attention and recognition is what lies at the heart of so much discontent; or to use her term - dreariness. “How dreary to be somebody! How public - like a Frog - to tell one’s name the livelong day to an admiring bog”.

Thanks for stopping by. Peruse the site and feel free to drop me a comment at any time.
_