Hi! This is my personal website, pro-mise.net. I created it for a whole host of reasons. Many of them seem unimportant now. At the time of this writing, I am a 31 year old male, residing in Toronto, ON. I have lived in many parts of the US, but recently came here for work, and for something else, but I digress… You are most likely wondering, “Why PRO-MISE? What does that mean? What’s this Empty Glass business?” I’ll blog a bit about that in the coming weeks. This blog is specifically for those things…

When I did my first post here, I promised to provide some answers, but alas, with the holiday season and the frenetic pace of life in general, just finding time to blog The Empty Glass has been a struggle. With Xmas behind us now, I thought I’d start by addressing the most obvious of questions. That being “what does the URL mean?” It’s really not so complicated and I’m sure many of you have guessed it already. Remove the hyphen from it and you get the word “promise". You might be wondering, “why separate? Was promise.net taken?” The answer to that goes a little deeper. The hyphenation is there because it is a broken promise. What I call “word abuse” has been a fascination of mine for some time now. It can be described as any use or modification of a word intended to alter or distort its meaning through either graphical or conjugational manipulation. Promises, and more particularly broken ones are a repeated theme in much of my art, so it’s an idea I feel very attached to.

If you are reading this, you might wonder about the title of this blog. The Empty Glass may seem a somewhat obtuse title. It may seem obfuscated in some way. Perhaps, dear reader, you are confused or befuddled as to its meaning or intent. Allow me to explain… One of my favorite movies of all time, is a Japanese film. It’s called Cure. This movie follows two characters essentially. One is a mysterious amnesiac known only to us as Mamiya. The other is Detective Takabe, who is trying to decode the meaning behind a series of mysterious murders all perpetrated by different people, but sharing the exact same M.O. In this film, there is a scene when the ever cryptic Mamiya is speaking with a doctor at the hospital. He fills a glass with water and tells her,

All the things that used to be inside me… now they’re all outside.

So… I can see all the things inside you, Doctor.

But the inside of me is empty.

When he’s finished, he tips the glass of water, so that it spills on the floor. This scene affected me very powerfully. The notion of being so in tune with your surroundings and those that are a part of them, because you feel nothing and essentially are nothing. In a way, this also seemed to be a notion very sympathetic to blogging as well. You pour your soul onto the screen. Your thoughts, ideas, and convictions… You empty yourself and then see the world anew. As if with the eyes of a babe.

As the months go on and we round the 1 anniversary of this site, it’s seen an incredible transformation from this hideous inkling to a full on blog and I am working to continue that momentum. In the next month or so, this site should see our trajectory shift a bit. I will continue to do my best to blog about current events and social issues as part of The Empty Glass, but there will be the addition of a brand new blog that will comprise a mini-site all its own about strictly music and musicians. I’m very excited about this project and while I don’t want to give away too much right now, I have some ideas that I think will be exciting and enjoyable.