Days of escapism
(How much do you want to see? If everyone is bored, boredom means nothing. Boredom is a relative quaility. As to sadness, if everyone is sad, you can’t say you are sad anymore. After all, human is all too human. It’s hard to ignore the looking of the others. Eyes are blinded, but seeing through things means any good at all. Sometimes I wonder whether I am blinded or am seeing through too much. Where is our blind spot? How things we can’t see postpond our emotions?)
Polina Semionova!
To express how I am overwhelmed by her ballet through my low words is degrading what Art actually is. Art is beauty. And if beauty is so subjective, everyone has her own defintion of art.
Born in Moscow in 1984 (if I were a girl!). Semionova’s performance is extraordinary. Is it a performance though? Her art reaches the sublime where performance is long forgotten. Sublime is terror, but is also the dissolve of your subjectivity. The audience immerse into her dance. Time suspended. Space is defined by the genius who improvises on the stage.
Watch the clip and see what you make of it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uz2Gp7a38DM
Elegant, humble, touching, determined, blissful, my dictionary is too old-fashioned for her timeless bodily movement. The dance begins. Wakened up by a very modern sentance, her body indulges not in dreams anymore. Is music leading Semionova, or she is leading the music? See how she raises her legs, slides her arms, spins her body. All these are responding to the violin and piano. See how she twice ‘touches the air’ with her little fingers. Beautiful. She is communicating with the space. She nevers stays in the same position. No other people watching her but she is not alone. Space becomes her best friend. Her delicate tip-toed steps make her humble. Her whole body-stretch (at 1.29) makes her determined and proud. The best artist is most humble and proud at the same time. In front of art, you are controlled yet never trangress.
At the end, she does the ordinary spin but extraordinarily. Her spins forget not the music. You can imagine how many times she practised in order to match the end note. She returns to her beginning pose as if she wants to dream a dream again. Or perhaps her dream is actually the ballet; her dream is a 3-minutes-rhapsody. To begin and end with a dream: can art be more beautiful?
Yes, art is beauty. If Semionova is not art, I will have to wikipedi the word ‘art’ again. Although beauty is subjective, Semionova shall not be the artist who gives you an excuse for having subjectivity. Life is too short and art is too long. Yet I don’t mind stop studying and writing this little piece. Something long doesn’t mean boring at all. It means you need time to understand how beautiful it is. It is indeed surprising to see how ugly things are expensive in the market yet beautiful things are so universal and reachable.
Thank you, Polina Semionova.
New Words
How rare do we speak of new words? New words here I mean articulation of new ideas which is independent from any schools or disciplines. It’s not easy to speak of new words. What is said have been said; what is done have been done. Imagine that you come up with a ‘new’ idea. That idea is budding in your mind, awaiting to spill out through your tongue. Language here is merely a tool to convey that idea flowing somewhere in your brain. Language is to capture thoughts, bringing it into articulations. Going back to that ‘new’ idea, where does it come from? Is ‘new’ idea just a re-interpretation of experiences? Is it only a paraphrasing of what people said? Newspaper and television seem to be the best examples.
The phrase ‘new words’ is already impossible. There are new ideas but there can never be new words. Once ideas are articulated in language, the former is reduced into unmovable grave-stone. That means language itself is a problem. We thought language was a tool to convey ideas. But we have fogotten that some ideas cannot be expressed in words. Vocabularies are not enough for confessions (not to mention the split between how we write and speak, specifically referring to Hong Kong). Therefore you cannot quite understand your friend through his/her diary. Indeed there are many ideas/affects/images we cannot tell directly and have to be expressed through allegories. When you say A, you actually mean B. A and B are unrelated and are beyond typical linkage. Probably allegory is the channel to produce new words, new unspoken words. If you want to speak of new words, you always have to allude to it, alleogrize it.
(Actually I wanted to try write about the meaning of science in relation to truth, but I failed, again. No wonder I am so into PhD. As if Paul’s head is Damaged!)
The Burning Eyes
Well, is there any entry not a retrospect? Strolling friends’ writing, click, click, click and click, I again recall how unsuccessful we have been understanding a person through reading and writing. ‘Stop clicking. Your eyes are too curious!’ What’s wrong with my curiosity? Perhaps I should not peep in strangers’ diaries anymore. But my voyeuristic manner burns in my eyes. ‘Father, can’t you see I am burning?’ What’s the implication of reading a stranger? Through her dress, her shoes, her face, her hair, you read strangers everyday by symbols. Here, through dead words, symbols, images and sounds, you read strangers like a book. Can a stranger be read? When you claim that you understand your friend, on what ground are you saying that?
There is a crucial difference between saying ‘I love you’ and sending a heart-touching gift to whom you love. Similarly, to sing a song with passion and to kiss your lover with frenzy are two very different gestures but leading to the same end. I have mentioned at least four different communications. They are language (‘i love you’), sublimation (touching gift), aesthetics (sing a song) and Eros (kissing). Could you think of the fifth or sixth one?
As to strangerhood, these four communications are not very effective for understanding each other. When you read a stranger in a bus, all subjective interpretation flush into your mind. Normally we don’t communicate with strangers. Yet virtual space is another story: reading a stranger’s entry become even stranger. It’s only in the digital space that we begin to respond to strangers. Moral responsibility has been wreched since the invention of public diaries. (what a oxymoron!) Our anxieties towards strangers heave away due to the masking of identity. Men are womanly enough to shed their tears; women are manly enough to exposes their hatred. What a ‘My Space’! If my desire for strangers, peeping into your site, is voyeuristic, indulgence in writing entries must be exhibitionistic in return. In fact, to-look-at and to-be-looked-at are never discrete qualities. Click, click, click and click, no matter how long you stay in a site, you click into it compulsively. Reading and writing, which arouses you more? I let your burning eyes to decide.
Have been reading many novels. Caleb Williams (1794) is one of them. Read hurriedly, picked up two lines which somehow summarize its theme on romanticism:
1. From CW: “You can destroy me, but you cannot make me tremble.” 2. To CW: “I can admire your abilities, without tolerating your character.” The author is the father of Mary Shelley, the one who wrote Frankenstein.
Shall anyone feel moody on the Valentines Day, here is a lovely poem for you to kill some inspiring time. It looks easy, but it is not. (Oh, it has nothing to do with love!)
Enjoy, my solitary reader.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something ever day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother’s watch. And look! My last, or
Next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master
I lost two cities, lovely one. And, vaster,
Some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
– Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
The art of losing’s not too hard to master
Papa!
Father had left. Mother explained why she would never see him again. ‘Mum, where is Dad?’ He is doing well, don’t worry my dear. ‘Is he coming back for dinner tonight?’ No, he won’t. Not today. ‘Lots of work in the office?’ Yes, a lot. ‘Shall we give him a call? He must be very hungry. I was going to make dumplings for him.’ Father will take care himself. He is going to another country. ‘What is that?’ When we have our dinner, he will be sleeping in the middle of night. ‘Papa! How come! Is he safe there?’ Oh he is safe, very safe. ‘But he is in another world. Do we got a time machine mama?’ Why? ‘Take Papa back from the future!’ Dear, he is in another country. ‘Yes, he is in the future right? I understand. Lets go there and save Papa!’ No! He will not come back. ‘Ask Papa to wait for us then. We will see him again in the future!’ When we arrive at the future, papa will be in the future of future. ‘Oh Papa! So no more Papa?’ No more, my dear. ‘I will get a time machine anyway.’ Ridiculous! ‘What?! You don’t miss Papa? You let Papa go. You don’t want to see Papa!’ No. Yes. No. I want to see him. ‘Who’s the guy outside mama?’ He is…he is your uncle. He is a good man. Don’t think wrong of him dear. ‘I don’t want any uncles mama. I want Papa!’ He will be your Papa! ‘No! It cannot be true! I won’t be the daughter of that man. Terrible!’ It’s not a choice my dear. ‘Mama!’ Come on, Let me hug you. ‘Go away! No more Mama! No more Papa! No you don’t go away. I will go away!’ Please my dear. ‘Please! Don’t speak to me like that! We are done! We are done!’ My dear… Door slammed. Undressed, she ran and panted. Street lights reflected on her goddes-like face. No destination, groping in the dark is destiny.
A Letter Written on 6.2.1997
It is the maddest of times, it is the most banal of times. Do you realize that ‘February’ also means ‘fever’ in Middle English? Though winter, how unbelievable to see everyone around you suddenly get on fire, mad and burning?! But tears were not dried by flames. Our madness is dormant in the past, now roaring like a tragic hero in epics. People die, people cry; people mourn and people weep. As if sadness is contagious, spreading like the Black Death. Calendar makes us worry; your watch reminds you to die. When is the deadline who should cry? Uncertainty strikes a shiver in your spine. I am writing to you ten years ago. Nothing has changed since 1997. Puzzle, horrible, the future is but a riddle. I want not to repeat my sadness but my tears with the same flavor fall down involuntarily in Februaries. The month is burning. No, we are burning! February, it is the month! Sympathy and sympathized. The most banal person thought he would never get mad. When tragedy visits he treats it like a guest, separating himself from being sentimental. The only way to perceive tragedy is to be proud of ourselves. When you see something as tragic you are already trapped in a fixed position, identity, and perspective. Tragedy keeps you from madness. Sometimes tears can be a very selfish thing. I shall keep writing to you until one day when you see yourself in my letters. I have a date on the first of July. My friend shall bring me back to 2007 and we three will see each other like seeing ourselves in the mirror. – Your most faithful friend.
The Cranberries on War
Warfare became popular as a world issue when two aeroplanes struck the twin tower on 11.9. Its popularity penetrates school education. We suddenly saw a question in public exam in English, asking us to discuss whether warfare is good or not. Teachers bring in warfare into classrooms. ‘Students, shall America declare war to Iraq?’ Train of moral, ethical, racial, historical, economical and political issues await them to respond. The death in battlefields become the blossom of intellegence in next generations.
The Cranberries’s Zombie shall be another perspective to ‘teach’ warfare.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDG56Xq4JFQ
http://www.straightlyrics.com/viewLyrics.php?song=12436
The MV is marvellous. A mix of five narratives: 1. a soldier patrolling 2. kids fighting 3. the band performing 4. historical sites and 5. the St. Sebastian imitation. Be aware that the first three are in B&W and the last two are in colors. The MV in 1995 is a memorial of the IRA bombing in 1993 where two boys were killed. Saint Sebatian is a Christian saint who was prosecuted by Roman Catholics. The scene metaphorizes the conflict between UK and Irland in terms of their national religions. The kids in the adaptation are holding arrows and acting Sebatian at the same time. They are aggresive but masochistic. The soldier is solitary, kids hateful, Saint miserable. Childhood, Adulthood, Sainthood, war merges the three. Warfare connects and disconnects human. Though no guns, no tanks, no missles, the MV subtly takes on the issue of war.
Three Types
Everyone in public exam read the passage about how the Chinese (or should I say Taiwanese) writer experienced identity crisis when he first settled in Chicago. Gazing at a quiet lake, his mind turned tumult. What is it like to experience identity crisis? The experience was vagely described in the passage, ending up with an image of ‘心明澄清’ triggered by the lake. Can we precisely decribe such an experience? What is identity? One thing we are sure: the writer was traumatized only after he became a diaspora. His trauma originates from the change of environment and people as he moved to Chicago. So people who study abroad, moving to UK, Canada, America, Australia, Germany, Japan, etc, are very susceptible to identity crisis. Such identity crisis are not very hard to resolve because diaspora usually form community so as to seek mutual identifications. But what I suggest here is another kind of identity crisis which is so frequent that we are numbed by it. It’s the typical-identity-shift which I shall abbreviate to TIS in the following.
The Star Tower
Last night I dreamt of the star tower. What is the star tower? I have no idea. But I am sure it was in my dream. The dream started with me walking on stairs in an autumn night. My friend, who took the lead, was bringing me to a new place. I thought I know the place, but I didn’t. I remember I knew the place. It’s somewhere in Hong Kong and it’s called ‘觀星樓’. I thought I know that place until I really saw it in my dream. Still stairs, my friend kept on leading me from one floor to another. When I wanted to ask her when we would arrive I saw another huge stack of stairs. They were suspended in the dark and detached to any buildings. At that time, I was quite sure we were very high up in the sky.
After somemore undertaking, I and my friend finally reached the top of the star tower. I felt strangly delighted. The top was a huge square with people chattering under the wonderful moonlight. There were rows of illuminated apartments attached to the square (this is unrealistic because aparments cannot built on the top of a tower which is so high as if it can reach the heaven). Smiles found on every chattering faces, the divine location created an undisturbed community. As if the purpose of wandering in the star tower is not watching stars but the friends and lovers standing next to you. Under the starry night, people were enjoying their nocturnal consciousness – half awake half asleep. Scars are gently stretched apart, hoping wounds could be ultimately healed again. Supposedly the star tower should be romantic. Yet in such a situation where everyone tried to resolve their pain so publicly, romance are not to exist. I was not talking with anyone. Even though I knew my friend was my compass, I never saw her in the dream at all. Our tendency for height is mysterious. Perhaps we all creatures have a thirst for the heaven, otherwise we have a contempt of the low. No wonder class difference is rooted everywhere in Hong Kong. See how the skyscrpers and fourty-storey apartments devide people by height. Hence possession induce agreession against the others. Thanks to my dream, I now understand why people, including me no doubt, blindly cling to height.
Like every other dreams, I forgot what happened at the end. But I am quite sure that there is no such a star tower in reality. Neglected the location, such massive night-chat can only exist in festivity. And one day I shall experience a situation which resembles my dream and strikes me with an uncanny.
Obshchechelovek 