It occurred to me in a moment of comparative idleness, while I was running some chord progressions on my electronic zither to get the right feel for the madrigal I’m composing in medieval French about the union of a strange quark and a heavy mu boson, that the personal essay — the blog, ifyou will — of today is the historian’s mother lode of tomorrow. This sort of short, intensely private screed, where honesty of thought and description are so essential will be the future biographer’s key to the inner truth. These idle thoughts thrown off, as it were, in a spare moment between, say, developing an antitoxin for the deadly alkaloid secreted by the nictating membrane of the lesser Bellus Causius and choreographing the tap dance sequence for the courtroom scene in the upcoming musical version of The Merchant of Venice — they will provide the best glimpse of the true depths of soul of the bloggist. For who could lie or exaggerate on a blog? Who?
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