Tuesday, May 11, 2004

Today I should comment on Kitty Miller's party because this is the corresponding entry by Andy, but instead I find the need to layout important paradigms for the future of this project.

This particular entry marks an important time in the development of "Diary of a Star" (that's this website). Because the original entries by Andy in The Andy Warhol Diaries span over a period of ten years, I have come to realize that I will not be able to write about his diary everyday for ten years. My resources are limited and it is unreasonable for me to commit to such a long term task. Instead I have opted to select from the material that was originally published by Pat Hackett. This means that I will choose entries from her selected entries. I will not edit the actual entries; these will be posted as they appear in her book. I will add links and comments on the "meta diary" (that's this page), to critique on the activity of blogging in relationship to diary writing.

Pat Hackett selected the material published in the book from a much larger pool of entries. What Hackett is doing when she edits the diaries is becoming an author in her own right. She has left out material that the reader must wonder about, and created her own narrative of Andy. In a sense, then, when reading Andy's diaries, the reader is compelled to wonder about the other entries Hackett did not choose, as well as the parts she edited out of the days she did choose to publish. This process of selection exposes Hackett as an author, as a person who selected according to what she deemed important. So, in a sense when reading the Warhol Diaries, we are reading a portrait of Andy that was constructed by Hackett as editor.

With all this in mind, I find it more appropriate that I choose from Hackett's choosings. This strategy will also further comment on new media's dependency on metalanguages to function; that is, Hackett filtered material for the reader, then the reader (me, the book reader) re-filters this material for other readers (you, the web surfer). My main objective is to comment on blogging and its relationship to diary entries, the private and public, the idea of a celebrity and its life as a public persona, and the activity of web-surfing as a new social space; all these interests come to be reinforced by my own editing of Hackett's editing.

So, from now on, I will choose selections from the 10 year span published by Hacket as The Andy Warhol Diaries for 10 months. This means that for each month there will be about thirty entries comprising a year, starting with 1977. Due to everyday legistics, it might be necessary for me to have a month off from time to time; however, all sets of entries will usually be started on the first of the month and end on the last day of the month. In this way, the reader, while becoming aware of my appropriation of pre-published material, may have the desire to find out what material I did not choose and, therefore, might consider reading the actual diary, which is absolutely fascinating.

So the first edited entries will start on July 1, 2004. Like the previous entries, I will first post Andy's original journal entry, and then I will comment on his material on this page.