Love, creativity and schizophrenia

Seems that a person will lose his creativity when he falls in love. The greatest writers were unmarried. If married, they rarely last long. And their children often suffer from schizophrenia (see Albert Einstein, Jame Joyce, Harold Bloom, etc). Creativity comes from solitude and melancholy. I should read Klein before writing this, but I will have a go anyway. Love creates selflessness and bliss. Love and creativity seem to be incompatible….

Two modes of thought

One brain, two extremes, three persons, four dimensions. Two groups of people living: the universal and the particulars. Some people like seeing things as a whole; some as fragments. The universal mind is masculine. It likes to categorize things so that they all add up to a whole. The world is not infinite; for him experiences can be totalized. Like father, wants every thing to be under controlled; like ruler, wants everyone peaceful. Revolution? Never. On the other hand, the mind of particulars is feminine. Focuses on details, seeing thing as constellation of things. More is less; function is not her priority. A little observation spends her the whole afternoon to digest. She has the most sensitive taste bud; ordinary food becomes unique in her mouth. Boredom is not a vocabulary for her because every experience is a new experience. Only the universal mind would scream for being bored. The particular mind is always happier but with more disturbance compared to the universal. Because the particulars do not categorize experiences; the reality is heterogenous to her. The next moment will contradict the present, so as the present has overthrown the past. The unversal mind always sleep well whereas the particulars suffer from various insomnia in every single night.

I want to say more but the passage will just go on and on as if I grow the mind of particulars. Writing becomes not a tree but a nutritious rhizome spreading from nowhere and everywhere. The universal, and the particular are probably not mutually exclusive. Two modes of thought co-exist. They do not repel as if either one of them would dominate under normal education. Seemingly those who suceeds in normal education bear an universal mind. And not surprisingly, minds of the particulars will emerge in art-houses and other peripheral industries. Universal and particulars are analogous to centre and marginal, if you like. 

Responsibility

I saw people justifying their unpopular decisions; I saw people moaning about their inabilities; I saw people showing their contempt for other people, and more often, for authorites. I heard people bad-mouthing their closest friends; I heard people victimizing themselves as if they are nothing more than a louse. I heard people crying over spilt milk. More precisely, people cry over those milk that had to be spilt: people complain about something cannot be changed. I heard people disliking their bodies. How many things they have done in order to disguise/tort their fleshes when standing in front of the mirror, readying to walk out the door? Bitterness is everywhere within my sight; the nostalgic noise to turn back time whirls forever in my cocklea.

It is not me myself who is unhappy: voices and images are more than enough to stimulate the tear-duct. How am I supposed to respond to tears? Am I reponsible for people’s sadness? In psychical economy, as it were, I need not to show my empathy. Yet, being indifferent to sadness is already a response. The way people live their lives today does not allow an irresponsible person to survive. Community sustains with people’s mutual responsibility.

Such kind of ethical response is helpful for temporarily reducing unhappiness of the others. We have to remind ourselves that what we saw and heard from people are mostly their confessions. Most of the time the confessants do not need a solution of their problem but certain extent of confirmation…After all, our responsibilty to the others is to confirm the others’ opionion, identity, values, etc…And yet, being that responsible will spoil the confessants, hiding the origin of their moans and tears. Again we back to the issue: yes, we are responsible to people’s sadness. What is more interesting to ask is: how should we respond, and by responding what are we trying to achieve?

Thus wrote Dostoevsky, ‘We are all responsible for everyone else – but I am more responsible than all the ohters.’ (The  Karamozov Brothers, 1880).

Sick

Entrails are entangled into thousands of knots. A coin-sized hole is shot through the guts, where gastric juice diffuses into the bodily fluid. Soon blood will also blend into the juice like a cup of colorful cocktail. If our guts are fine, we should reuse them as water bottle. Indeed it is the today’s most fashionable property. But to find a pure guts to make water bottles is more difficult than eating msg-free food in a Chinese restaurant. The entrails are often tainted with inorganic things like irons and polystyrene because they remain undigested. These brilliant coatings prevent diffusion and osmosis, which are ideal for turning our guts into a endurable bottle. For how to remove the guts from our body and the procedure to add colors or print picture on the guts, we have to……

letter 32

‘I am writing you back. Don’t be tamed and never be a robert. Let the days be as wild as possible. Why interpret our passionate body? Our mind can be more useful than that. I miss you too. I cannot substitute Glenn Gould for you. Touching the keys is nothing compared to feeling your fingers. Perhaps I should visit the arcade as well. Glass-ceiling and marble floor, the indoor space always pretends to be outdoor. When the public and the private blend, where should I find myself in that hybrid space? I lose myself in shopping malls. Are they much different from the entire world? If only I could see myself without a mirror. True self, where is my true self? Only in love can it express itself in fullest extent. Even the most gifted surgeon fails to cut it out. Blood, nothing but blood will splash my face if I try to find it by myself. I have read a interesting bit today. Want to share with me? If I confess, “I cannot manage without another, I cannot become myself without another; I must find myself in another by find another in myself.” Do not be automaton. You might rid yourself of pain, but yours will pass onto the others. The later roberts live, the sooner wild men die. The July heat has gone and they said tomorrow is going to snow. Is that a slower train towards death compared to your 1945 bombing? I always picture the apocalypse will eat up the world bit by bit. When virus contaminates everyone, it would be our aggression which ends the world. Dear, love should not be colder than death. Let it glows and shuns the apocalypse.’

13.7 Oslo

letter 98

‘Dear, how are you? Remember Wong’s film *the days of being wild*? If I were Leslie, I’d rather be tamed. The feeling of missing you; the feeling of emptiness; the feeling of missing me; the feeling of possession – they are all whirling in my blood. I was wandering in the arcade again. Glass-ceiling, marble-floor, shops stick together like blocks of Lego – nothing but commodities come into life and wave hands to me. I had no time for the dead. Yet I could not bear you occupying my mind either. I plucked my ears with Glenn Gould. He is always the brilliant reader of Bach. Do you know he murmurs when he plays the piano? Let alone the chair he insists to sit on every time he performs. His father made it for him. He can’t do anything without the chair. Is it a fetish or what? I can bear you now because Gould is your favourite. With him, I can let part of you stay in my mind. You don’t want blaze nor little flame glowed on a match. Fireworks would stands in between and lives much longer in me. Allegory is my way to miss you. Symbolizing is agony. Let yourself free up to any kind of assciation. Do not give me your perfume or shoes. They symbolize the fanastic her whom I cannot bear to miss. I walked away. The train flew across my eyes. The image of speed was daunting. I wish I could leave the city and stay with you in the country. But is that possible? Or do I want this to happen? Perhpas it’s me myself who is most attached to the city. I unplucked my ears after getting off the bus. Me arrived. I let not the others enter my head. I turned the keys, opened the cage. Left my bag and took off my clothes. Cannot be more routine. I’d rather not be wild nor tamed. Automaton is the word. Let it be robert, rubric, routine. The days of being a robert sounds fun. At least i can make sure my mind will not be occupied by anyone: it occupies itself. Nothing occupies nothing. Affection has come to its limit. Whether it withers or explodes only God knows. Write to me. People in the 18th century had nothing to do but wrote to their friends. Can you do this for me? Tomorrow is not another day; it will be still today. I will experience the pleausre of bombing in 1945. Do you know how would a robert feel when it get bombed?

1.7 Hiroshima’

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qB76jxBq_gQ&mode=related&search=

I Miss You

I promised to write down my experience. But when I begin to recollect images and try to form a story, my poor writing can hardly articulate this dream-like rhapsody. You cannot tell a wonderful story if the story is your own experience. Because wonderful experience cannot be told; and it is only a story could be wonderful. ‘Just tell your experience then, it doesn’t need to be a story’, you say. To tell my experience, I can indeed bring forth my schedule, post up pictures with captions, and add a few comments to say the food was good or the scenery was nice. But is that my experience? Are pictures, captions, comments, and ‘Wall-to-wall’ my experiences? What are my experience? How much do (you think) I remember if I do not re-experience my experience in front of you with my keyboard and cameras? 

I cannot present my experience to others; presentation is always re-presentation. When I re-present my experience – that means I tell you a story – I presume what I speak is somehow identical to what is experienced in the past. But sometimes the more we describe the past, the more we find the past undescribable. Not every experience can (should) be told. Stimuli attached to a particular experience can be so intense that only repetition of language can seemingly achieve the goal of representation.

‘I miss you. I miss you!’ How many times would be enough for such undescribable feeling. To miss someone perhaps is to miss the experience you had with that person. If one can articulate his wonderful experience with a person, he will not miss that person anymore. The emotion attached to that experience is re-experienced through languages, photos and souvenirs. Missing someone is a result of not being able to re-experience certain experiences which happened outside the realm of language.

You rarely see people presenting their love life here because that kind of experience is one of the many which cannot be re-experienced. I can re-experience my emotions which I have created for the day. But I can’t tell you here I am in love, I am jealous, or I am losing my sense. Only in love life our true self expresses itself. In writing: never.

I miss the experience; I miss the person who created that experience. I can neither create another experience nor re-experience the past. I stuck at the middle, between aparagus and the zoo, the present from which I always want to escape. I am too green as a man of experience. A person misses because of their inexperience. It’s not because the experience runs away from him, but he simply has not experienced enough.

PS. Still, I would summerize my recent experience with:

八爪魚急救咬手瓜 : )

IOU

What troubles you
your voice troubles you
What troubles you
your teeth troubles you
What troubles you
your fingers trouble you
What troubles you
you, troubles you.

Untitled

Moonlight, caressing the ears
White, it is white
Drawn to sleep all night
lightning never out of sight
Light, it is light
fleeting, the nightmare alights
I wish I were conscious

I rub my ears
and everything comes real
outside the dream
I felt and see

Lightning has stopped
has it really stopped? 
A pale stroke criss-crossing the sky
as if the blue can never reside

Let weather
captures
the c-a-p-r-i-c-i-o-u-s
mood

(Translated and adapted from Jnpg)

The Uneventful

July is coming but the lowest temperature today is 9’c. If the drastic cold is not to do with El Nino or La Nina (whatever) I know nothing about Nature (If fact I don’t). Reread Benjamin’s *the storyteller* then took a bus to the University. Checked out two more books on Benjamin, thought I would like to really understand his writings. Couldn’t find L and J, lunched with myself and saw them crossing in front of me while I was finishing off the last morsel of bread. Waved my hand, a woman returned a smile with a little bit awkwardness as she realized I was not greeting her. Nice seeing L. He is still very L, and will always be. J was trapped by the woman and spared me and L a good nice 5 minutes chat (in Cantonese). All gone. For the sake of politeness (gosh!), I moved forward and said ‘hi’ to the woman as well. She started speaking all the way from asparagus to zodiac. Not could I stop nor leave. ‘Thank you very much’ I said. Turning my face and spilt out a evil face. ‘she appreciates my patience. Thank you!’ Back to the books on Benjamin. Somehow fell into a nice siesta. Woke up instinctually, then rushed to J’s reading group. ‘Are you still feeling guilty?’ My friend T asked. ‘Do I look like I feel not?’ Both elated. More than 2 hours lapsed. Evening walk along Oxford road until we saw Sainsbury. Dined at J’s house. Pizza, french bread, cheese with Portugal wine filled up our bellies. More to come are apple crumble and strawberries. If only L is here with us could the dinner be so nice. In fact it was too nice. Regurgitatoin was secretly going on inside me. 10:20pm, earlier than usual, but it was time to go. Night walk along oxford road. Another 20 mins I arrived. Took a shower and wrote an email. Did not want to desert my blog so here I am. But I have not begun yet. Is that alright? Let me know if you want more exciting information. I will come up with a story next time.