The blogger whose voice I have decided to analyze goes by the name of Dee Sunshine. His blog of the same name is one of the most personal blogs that I have yet seen within the realm of my own. He posts every 2-5 days on average and the subject of each post is always something that he has experienced directly; he never posts articles or comments on popular culture. From the personal experiences that he shares, he attempts discover and illuminate any spiritual or general advice that he discovers. Or, in other cases, he simply explores the issues that he deals with in an almost rambling, musing kind of way. The way I am describing the blog, it may seem like it comes off as preachy or arrogant that he thinks his own specific, personal experiences are worth the attention of others. However, the way that he composes his posts is so personal that it does not seem like that at all when read; it reads more like a private diary than a public blog.
The most striking aspect of Dee’s voice is his overall tone. He seems to focus every aspect of his writing, from word choice to punctuation, first and foremost on giving readers the sense of hearing his words rather than reading them. He designs his sentences with a distinctly poetic rhythm built into them, forcing the reader to digest his words with a specific cadence.
“India! I love this mad, beautiful, smelly, fragrant, gentle, noisy country. It is the best place I have ever known. It is my home, my OM, my bone, my blood, my soul.”
This is one of the better examples of Dee’s poetic sensibilities, from a post entitled “Full Moon Perambulations”. There really is only one way to read this quote out loud, and its specific rhythmic pattern is re-enforced by its punctuation. The first exclamation point forces a full-length (half-note) pause after the word India. The next sentence is then broken down by commas into two syllable phrases, roughly a quarter-note for each (with the exception of the word “beautiful” whose last two syllables kind of blend into one). This gives the sentence an almost iambic pentameter-ish feel in the first half. This pattern is then broken with a firm statement of fact “It is the best place I have ever known.”, followed by another wave of flowing adjectives. These follow a similar pattern as the first set, but are even more connected to each other since each phrase starts with the word “my”, followed by a word whose main vowel is “O”, and the first three even rhyme with each other. This sentence, like the blog in general, is meant to be read (or at least imagined) out loud. Of course, there is no way that this particular sentence was initially written with as much detail in mind as I have just identified it as containing. However, my point is, that the unmistakable flow of these words denotes some sort of deliberate action on the part of the writer to give it a specific sound. Dee must have been at least mumbling this to himself as he wrote it. However, the sound of his words is not the only thing that makes Dee’s blog writing poetic. Although he rarely breaks grammatical rules in his writing, he will sometimes put words together in ways that are not technically correct in order to help the reader better grasp the emotion that he is attempting to portray. An example of this comes at the end of a post entitled “Anniversaries of Sorrow”, where he takes an intimate look back at a past (failed) relationship.
“Slowly, slowly, over the last 16 months, my heart has been healing, and I've been piecing myself together again. Slowly, slowly... but still not fixed, and still not immune to anniversaries of sorrow.”
His repetition of the word “slowly” causes the reader to literally get through the sentence slower than otherwise, highlighting the plodding, slinky-like pace with which his heart is apparently healing. He then takes this idea even further by repeating the phrase “Slowly, slowly” once again in the last sentence, this time even adding a “...” at the end to make the pause even longer. This subtle wordplay really brings the reader to his emotional level more effectively than any extra adjectives could have.
Overall, I find Dee’s writing to be interesting, albeit somewhat dramatic at times. He is extremely effective at getting his emotional point across weather or not the reader connects with his actual ideas. He writes with a personal voice; it definitely sounds like a person talking to another person, yet it is also distinctly formal. It is almost as if these blog posts are actually long lost love letters to someone..... possibly to Dee himself.
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