‘Communicability’ and a funeral

The question is: to what extent can a ‘tradition’ be passed on without its petrification? How much in this process of ‘living on’ is the return of the same, how much the return of a difference? Wong Kar Wai’s The Grandmaster can be read a reflection on this. The Chinese title of the film contains the word ‘Chung’, meaning ‘ancestor’, or, more generally, the idea of a whole formed by different flows. To quote Ip Man’s son, the reason why Ip Man is a grandmaster of Wing Chun is that he sowed many unbelievable seeds which then germinated all over the world. He taught Bruce Lee, not for long, but then Lee moved on to formulate his own philosophy. What is unique in Ip Man is not his Kung Fu, but his ability to invigorate his experience of Kung Fu and pass it on to his disciples.

Her face, though motionless, gives me the impression of deterioration. Guests stand up. They walk towards the coffin and throw the last glance to this woman whom they believe has ascended to the Heaven. Tears and crying echo in the hall. Some of them put forward their hands trying to reach the body in the glass box. I belong to the relatives side, but not the core group. What makes them cry so hysterically? A very stupid question. Perhaps it is the history of the tears I am thinking of. One of the core members, in the very last glance, calls out the woman’s name, as if trying to create once more a relationship with the dead. All those hymns and speeches mean very little compared to that hopeless cry.

My aunts, sitting next to me, are in tears. I have the intention of showing support but at the same time I wonder if this may look forceful in action. After some struggle I decide to do nothing and remain seated. When the guests have all given their last contact the ritual ends. They shake hands with the closest family members, showing support by every possible means. Few of them start to make jokes to alleviate the pain. The smoothness of the entire ritual makes me feel that the pain of mourning can be stored up and released at ease. Few minutes later the hall is virtually empty. The body will be cremated on the next day, which will be followed by a luncheon at restaurant.

‘The faces are impassive, as they tend to be in Chinese portrayals of well-bred subjects’ (Cahill, Chinese Painting, 20).

The 2/F Dungeon

It happened like that. And it will happen again. When the girls are moaning about their marks with spasmodic laughs, he can’t help but listen. It’s not the content which attracts him. Only the chance of being looked at gives him seconds of pleasure. He steps out his office, pretending he needs some water from the cooler. One purpose but multiple motives. He has even decided how to raise his head and look so that he can avoid all the possible awkwardness. Yes, the girls look…back. It’s so far away, and within that mini-second he can’t even reckon their faces. But that’s okay. Who cares.  

Too many impressions, too few experience. Sitting in my room. My desk, which is not suitable for reading. My lamp, which is too bright for my spoiled eyes. So many tasks to be done and yet, I see no motivation above me. My life is messy. No, lives are messy. In this moment I lack all my energy, but I know I will be back on track if I get myself chained again.

This reminds me of the American soldiers torturing convicts at Guantanamo Bay. The cruel photos we saw are a representation of violence but they also point to facts. It’s not simply the behavior of torturing is bad, but the idea of taking pictures, of topping up human bodies like lego, is disturbing. In other words, fact and fiction are no longer clearly separable in most judgments. For those who don’t see the point, who don’t see grey in black and white, they live comfortably in the old world. I feel irritated but I can do nothing about it. On the other hand, people like me are sometimes criticized for blurring reality and being indecisive.

When you think that your life is a mess, you will feel much better when you realize your neighbour is also troubled by their own complicated stories. A blind man caressing the leg of an elephant will equally find warmth when he knows that another blind man is touching the elephant’s nose, despite the fact that they are experiencing different parts of the same animal.

I can ‘cultivate’ myself by filling up my schedule with ‘cultural’ events only because I have a comparatively flexible job. You can go to a talk about 19th century western music on the weekend after five days of 10 hour work. Yes, you can.

When the French were dissatisfied by their government, they grouped with other citizens and destroyed the government. When the Chinese were frustrated by the King, they invented new kinds of Kung Fu. The origin of Kung Fu perhaps is the best expression of Aristotle’s concept of Bio-politics. A kind of politics which has nothing to do with speech but the body. In this way, a Kung Fu master is an artist, if we take art as antagonistic to theory, to truth, to the universals.

多少

He is lost when he fixes his gaze upon a particular point of the vessels. He knows they are part of a massive circulatory system, but all the same. He enjoys looking at that particular point. Perhaps it’s not the image, but a point in thoughts which fascinates him. Heraclitus was right that a man cannot step on the same point in a river. But he didn’t know what the man was thinking. Why would the man want to capture the moment in the first place? The philosopher showed you the truth of time, but he didn’t explain the man’s thirst for truth. When I commit suicide I shall physically transform, and I will become man-god, says Kirilov in Dostoevsky. A Hong Kong student wrote something similar before he jumped over from his classroom and killed himself. D’s heroes keep coming back to the moment, trying to capture, beautify and overcome it. They are both frivolous and grievable.

Is listening to Canto pops an obsession of the moment? The desire for timelessness, standing outside the flow of time, seeing the world as cyclical. Those whose ears blocked carve out a space for themselves in not living with time. Particular images, smells, sounds, tastes regurgitate. As the loop goes on, the more heartaches you get.

Ears are the most vulnerable, and perhaps the most unfinalized part. When he hears a Canto pop song unexpectedly, the impact on him can change completely. Or if only a fragment is played; or if it’s played when he is with strangers. The change of context has the potential to throw him back to time, recalling that the song has a history, and so is his experience of listening. He might sing a song in order to feel down. But the next time he might sing the same song after some exciting news. 

I wonder which kind of ‘happiness’ I prefer. A light or heavy one? A happiness entangled with the obsession of the moment, which, as Heraclitus already shown, is ungraspable? Or a happiness which can be found but not sought, a happiness which leaks through the cracks of walls, the void which our understanding does not give a name? How many vessels are ‘there’? How many ‘systems’ are there?

a draft of a script

P returned from city M. N picked him up in the airport. They met two years ago in Paris, occasionally talked on the internet. P was staying in N’s flat for few days. The flat was small but peaceful. There’s only one room and a balcony. Everything is done there. N has a bamboo chair, where P was sitting. She was half-lying on the floor. It was a hot and grey day in July. P wondered if N wanted to have a walk outside.

N: One thing I have learnt from Paris is frankness.

P: Do you mean being sincere, like being honest to yourself?

N: No, sincerity is different; I mean frankness.

(con’t)

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

‘Have I said it before? I am learning to see. Yes, I am beginning. It still goes badly. But I intend to make the most of my time.

To think, for instance, that I have never been aware before how many faces there are. There are quantities of human beings, but there are many more faces, for each person has several. There are people who wear the same face for years; naturally it wears out, it gets dirty, it splits at the folds, it stretches, like gloves one has worn on a journey. These are thrifty, simple people; they do not change their face, they never even have it cleaned. It is good enough, they say, and who can prove to them the contrary? The question of course arises, since they have several faces, what do they do with the others? They store them up. Their children will wear them. But sometimes, too, it happens that their dogs go out with them on. And why not? A face is a face.’

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, Rainer Maria Rilke

關於禁色

窗邊雨水　拼命地侵擾安睡
又再 撇濕亂髮堆　
無須惶恐 你在受驚中淌淚　
別怕 愛本是無罪

What is the forbidden colour? He leans against the window frame, reflecting on insomnia. On the threshold, the rain, again, lands on his hair. Does ‘he’ exist inside or outside the house? Someone is shocked by the rain and breaks into tears. ‘Afraid not, love is sin-less’. First, we have the rain, then someone shocked and seeks protection. Then we have this line about love and guilt, suggesting that the shocked one suffers from guilt. All these are surrounded by rain.

請關上窗 寄望夢想於今後　
讓我 再握著你手
無須逃走　世俗目光雖荒謬
為你　我甘願承受

‘Close the window, please!’ But then, to where can we escape? Or do we need to escape? The world outside despises you, but ‘he’ can tolerate. The house is as if shrinking because of the world’s contempt. But if ‘he’ can take up all the guilt in the shocked one, he will be able to resist the suppressive outside. ‘I am willing to suffer for you’, he seems to have said.

願某地方 不需將愛傷害　
抹殺內心的色彩
願某日子　不需苦痛忍耐　
將禁色盡染在夢魂外

Can there be an ‘outside’ which is outside the outside? There colours find their ‘truest’ expression. There ‘he’ needs not to tolerate. There colours need not to be stained on the skin of my dream.

千種痛哀　結在夢魘的心內　
願我 到死未悔改
時鐘停止　我在耐心的等待　
害怕 雨聲在門外

I have been hiding wrongs and sadness inside me. I stopped the clock. Waiting. I dare not to go outside. The rain, the rain is terrifying.

若這地方 必須將愛傷害
抹殺內心色彩　
讓我就此消失這晚風雨內
可再生在某夢幻年代

If once again the rain has to kill, if colours must be despised, let me vanish in this rainy night and revive in some other dreaming generation.

He was imprisoned, but couldn’t help reflecting on the outside. He was lonesome, therefore fantasizing someone was next to him. He resented the outside world, contemplating an unseen world. His space was limited and he imagined timelessness. To answer the question in the beginning, there is no way to prove what colour is forbidden. That colour which is tabooed cannot be seen. It has always already disappeared in that rainy night (這晚風雨內). And it will only appear in some other time (夢幻年代). The truth content of 禁色
is not that which was suppressed or criminalized. What has been marginalized, rather, is an ideal, an untamed and primeval wish which the ‘outside’ dares not to accept. If what is forbidden is radical, it is radical not because it has something ‘transgressive’ to say. Rather, it is radical precisely because it cannot be identified with any positions.

When the forbidden colour returns, a kind of divine violence flits by. In that infinitely short period of time, colours are explosively brought out to the eyes. Only through this particular moment of danger can we see what colours mean. Only through that pin-hole moment can we redeem the colour which was stained on the skin of my dream. But when will this moment arrive? Does it ever arrive? Is colour to be found ‘inside’, or ‘outside’?

p.s. 禁色 (forbidden Colour) is a song by Anthony Wong and Lau Yi Tat in the 80s’. It was said to be an implicit commentary on homosexuality. Wong himself said the song is about the thirst for freedom. He performed it in an open-space concert in Hong Kong in 1989, showing his support for the student protest in Tiananmen Square.  The lyricist is by 陳少琪 (Keith Chan).

notes on the 19th century

The limits in Austen’s social world – the ‘middle-class aristocracy’ or ‘pseudo-gentry’. Their anxiety to maintain  a high social status. That gentleman-ism needs to be fought for but not given. The ‘regulated hatred’ against the neighbours and people from a slightly different social class (ressentiment). But at the same time the impetus to maintain a relationship with them. The condition splits the pseudo-gentry, or the ‘splitting’ rank. All these contribute to the problems of hypocrisy, being ironic (that’s the only way to survive the day!) and alienation.

To step back for a larger picture, Austen’s world is framed by materiality (i.e. yearly income, social status, land properties, etc). And there is no sign of wanting to step beyond that. In Austen’s Emma, the farce concerning Mr. Elton being rejected by Emma, who thought his target was Harriet, is summarized as:

Their being so fixed, so absolutely fixed, in the same place, was bad for each, for all three. Not one of them had the power of removal,or of effecting any material change of society. They must encounter each other, and make the best of it  (end of vol. 1).

The Austenian figures are pressed together by the hierarchical system and the novel shows no sign of wanting to transgress it. The absence of contemplation, the desire for metaphysics, the convulsive thirst for ideals, is what distinguishes Austen from writers such as Byron, the Brontes and Eliot. They are different in various ways. The modern novels became more and more sensitive to the decay of religion and the secular needs for ideals. Some writers put more weight on the material side (e.g. Austen) and some on the idealistic (implying nostalgia, such as Shirley). And it seems that only until George Eliot do we have a sense of dialectical tension between the two. Such polyphonic treatment of worldviews was found in the same period in Dostoevsky.

It seems that the rise of the novel in the 19th century has a parallel with the desire to depict the endless conflicts in consciousness. That would find expression in Expressionist art in the 20th century, which has been criticized by some Marxist critics for not political enough. If novel is inherently dialogic – juxtaposing different voices/faces/body parts/depth-of-fields – to what extents can the novel as a form be understood as ‘political’? As Flaubert once said that he wants to write a novel which is about nothing. Beckett did it in drama. How about in the novel? Joyce?

coffee-house

The background was a coffee-house. Not late, about 5 in the afternoon. But because of the early sunset, the sky and faces on the street were not easily distinguishable. Threshold, dusk, the transition between day and night. It’s this fleeting moment that you enjoyed. You hated the bitterness in coffee, but you ordered a cappuccino all the same. Sometimes you asked for espresso, only because you were anxious to show that you have good taste. ‘Let’s do cappuccino this time. It’s less pretentious’. The interior of the coffee-house was no more brighter than the outside. The only difference, you might have fancied, was the temperature: you enjoyed gazing at people who were wrapped by overcoats, like hundreds of sausages hopping along the pedestrian. But who knows what they had in mind when they had spotted your melancholic look?

Aha, it’s time to turn your eyes to the cashier, where a rather attractive woman was serving cakes and drinks. Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère painted in 1882 – a year after Dostoevsky’s death. The bar in the picture is much brighter. Here the gaze was tinged with more curiosity under the dim ambience. No one was on the queue and you were alone. It was the first time you had the chance to observe the whole process of she preparing the coffee for you. ‘Yes, how about a piece of delightful sponge cake?’ When she finished and asked for the charge, what would you do? In what manner should you say ‘thank you’? Would saying  ‘cheers’ make the whole conversation (well, was it a conversation?) more friendly and…suggestive? Perhaps she was thinking something else. When you passed her the 5 pounds note you almost touched her hand. That’s not important at all, or was it? She turned her back and clicked a few button on the computer. Why it took so long! Your eyes could not help to give another reading of  her ‘back’. That’s even more pleasurable, especially the way she shook her waist playfully when thinking which button to click.

What a spectacle after so many years of academic training. But next moment you knew you should not have judged her by the waist. ‘Thank you’, she uttered in a rather low and sensual tone. Then your gaze turned to somewhere else. You chose to sit under a spotlight, far away from the cashier, but still she could, if she wanted, throw a glance at your back (you had deliberate turned away). And that’s it. A coffee and cake could have been so relaxing, you thought, but the whole twenty minutes became a performance. ‘Better to walk away without her notice’. Imagining yourself to be the loner of the world, you decided to walk away from the house and returned to the chilling outside.