Daily Doldrums and Insights

Convalescing

2011-08-25T22:08:48Z

We stand on a precipice, then before a chasm, and as we wait it becomes higher, wider, deeper, but I am crazy enough to think it doesn't matter which way we leap because when we leap we will have learned to fly. Is that blasphemy or faith? - Diane Arbus to Marvin Israel, December 27 1959

Everyone goes through the same old doctrine called life. What differentiates people are ultimately not gender, politics, religion or nationality, but beliefs. Christians prefer to call it faith, because they know what it is like to be touched by something divine that divides the line. Pagans call it belief. It can be a touch of the strings, a wording of a forgotten poem, a self-indulgent momentum of some inexplicable frenzy. But it is something you feel deep inside, not some logical conclusion to what intelligence tells you. And when it does not coincide with what you believe to be true, conflict begins. In the beginning it can be minor but in time it will be a great divide. And when the unbearable learns to speak the language of your reason, everything will disintegrate in style.

Words

2011-08-14T15:12:08Z

Words have a power to destroy everything. They start wars, they pillage you to the point you can't resist like a demon would hack your soul, they make you want to evaporate. They dribble bruises that will take a lot more words and time to heal. They make the most ridiculous most serious, and they can never be unsaid. Words also have a power to alter the destruction they induce, but this power is much less than the initial detonation because the they spring from a much lesser motive. Words are what I care about the most in the world, if I cared about anything, and yet, like all children do, they trecherously bring me down. This is why I like cats better than human beings as I am always reminded that I will never be able to understand them and that is how we stay together. When communication deteriorates into hate, nothing can be saved from the infinite remorse. Losing faith in love, losing faith in oneself. Knowledge turning against myself. Beautiful things stay beautiful because they are wisely silent. Words, on the other hand, will eventually murder me.

Impromptu for So-Rim Lee

2011-07-30T08:47:13Z

You know it's never going to be "enough" for you. Because you happen to be who you are, life will never be good enough to dazzle you as much as Rimbaud, Suede, or River Phoenix has ever touched you. Everybody seems to want the same thing, which is so often too simply summarized as "happiness" - that accursed word! But you know too damn well that making you happy involves a freaking Tower of Babel and succeeding it with a Parthenon. You don't have to lower your expectations; stay wanting, stay desiring, stay longing, stay hungry. And count your blessings at the start of each day. Don't forget to be thankful for what you already have, which is so much more than what you've always had, which is so much more than what you've ever wanted. You've come a far, far way - from that little square closet in Apkujung, to Sosa, to New York, to Brazil and to France to Portugal to Algeria, to London. And you've stood atop of so many mountains, always longing, always panting, always graceful. In the end, you'll realize how much of life you've savoured without knowing its taste, how much you've accomplished those trials that kept you up crying for so many nights. You don't have to dance away through life, if you don't want to. You can walk, in your own usual strides, with your own usual crowded head, like you've walked down so many roads before, like you've conquered so many paths and christened them, each and every one of them, with your scent and meaning. You'll want for more, more than ever, because it keeps you alive to keep wanting. But when it comes down to the day you'll find yourself gazing at an untrodden winding road and think, "I should sit down now", you'll know - you've lived, and you've loved.

Sushi Society

2011-07-01T19:18:08Z

One of the best sushi places in London is where you pick your own dish while the kaiten (conveyor belt) carries over six hundred different varieties of Japanese dishes in small portions. Each little dish is visibly distinguished by colour - green, blue, orange, purple, pink, and grey. The ultimate propagandistic beauty of the joint is that choosing what to eat is only purfunctorily decided by what you look at and feel like having. Underneath, everything operates in monetary values; each colour represents a certain amount of price, ranging from one pound and fifty pences to five pounds. At first I would skim through the rail, admiring the colourful variety of food I am free to pick and savour. Only then I would realize that I need to calculate my budget in order not to bite into thick tuna sashimi struck with the sudden shock that it would cost me much more than I thought. Democracy prevails on the surface - five-pounders are displayed next to one-pounders only differentiated by colours. Every plate is identically designed. The portions seem similar. Only when you're fully familiar with how the rail of appetite functions, however, that you understand that this democracy prevails upon strict capitalism. Is it liberating to satisfy your hunger with three one-pounders than to choose a single five-pounder and be content with the eternal truism of "quality over quantity"? At the end of the day, department stores have triumphantly taken over the Western world. Next comes sushi.

Project Log, June 19th 2011

2011-06-19T21:27:34Z

Upon deciding to reside in London for at least a couple of more months, I am mapping out a list of things I should see to polishing off until mid-September. Grander schemes incorporating chocolate croissants and details regarding the Woody Allen Project are to be kept clandestine until further notice.

1. Translate "Borges, Barthes, Barth, and the Death of the Author"
2. Finish Diane Arbus by Patricia Bosworth
3. Dissertation: Signification and Identification
4. Saatchi Gallery, Serpentine Gallery, Tate Modern
5. Somerset House, Sadler's Wells, Royal Court
6. Day trip to Cambridge, Cambridgeshire
7. Research Proposal
8. Finish the play
9. Tracy Emin at Haywayrd Gallery

Start looking into interpreting particular photographs in theatrical terms. Start with Angus McBean and move onto portrait photography holding onto a theme. Tate Modern Diane Arbus: Artist Rooms, 16 May 2011 - 31 March 2012 on Level 3. Inspired and blessed to be in this town where the sun sets at nine.

Drunken Morning

2011-06-12T10:50:30Z

I was walking home, getting drenched by the cold morning rain, from South to North London, taking strides over fresh puddles, making sure I don't get hit by families going to Church and driving in blind and lovely sublime faith, slightly drowsy, christened with budding memories, Suede's Dog Man Star newly released in my pockets, beckoning me that it's real and it's still there singing my melodies. And I jumped over a familiar block, shining in novelty, and I looked into a little face that was looking back at me and telling me,

I've been drinking cider and tasting youth.
And I've been cherished.

Stratosphere

2011-06-10T20:08:17Z

Stray kittens in Seoul die so easily, especially during the winter. Days like this, when London sky is pregnant with rainclouds, I wish I could fly over and save every one of those little lost lives that perished like they never existed, like the lyrics to a song that no one every sang. I am always with me, but I am as lost as the kittens that have nowhere to hide from the cold. And things can get very scary when thunderstorm comes. Cats in London are mostly microchipped. A friend tells me that this will be expanded into humans with a slight twist of political propaganda. I've spent most of my life trying to fit myself into a world where everyone else belongs. Most of the time I feel like I've truly metamorphosed into a perfect little elite rogue, primly sitting in the British Library sipping Peyton and Byrne coffee. But I know deep down that I dance to Brett Anderson's grey world of raindrops and kitschy lyricality, that I am only pretending to be what I am. Only these moments I realize that my life will be more precious when I have buried each little animal that lies on the curb of some forlorn street in some forlorn country, that I've mourned for the little souls that never got to quench their thirst for life, that I may become complete. Encountering little moments like these, I need to let go and spill words, in the very least, to compensate the losses I've never witnessed. And then I am solicited for the moment.

Logistics but the Apple

2011-05-31T05:03:20Z

The cryptic idea about any discipline in arts and humanities is that the logistics of the narrative is more important than the narrative itself; the way in which one tells a simple one-dimensional story with wit and rhetoric is more intriguing than a great story badly told, or any story well-told is more gripping and memorable than an intricate one poorly crafted; even if a story is built upon rich and complex plot, structuring it and delivering it defines its quality. So similar is the case with photography - just as an abstract photograph may lure the eyes but fails to draw in any more regards apart from curiosity, an apprently 'readable' photograph depicting the most ordinary things may be visually attractive and compelling solely due of its composition. Even if the object is not beautiful, a photograph can be beautiful. Or, in fact, the beauty of the object can be completely unrelated, if at all applicable, to the beauty of the photograph.

Rio

2011-05-23T20:18:59Z

After reggae has dramatically saved my day, I can't be sure of anything in this world anymore. Epsom derby on Saturday, moving flats and drowning hats. Fudge brownies with milk at midnight, what should I draw on his back this time, will you court me like never before, how many graces 'til we survive tonight?

Again, I dreamt of waking up in Rio. All over again. Next to my dark wonton poet.
Again, I woke up into exterior reality. It was London. It is London.
Oh how sweat rolled down my forehead.
Slow like blood and honey.

Remains of the Day

2011-05-21T19:49:19Z

I woke up to find my voice neutered very attractively, vaguely similar to Bonnie Tyler's. Some things can never be mended. Some people are born to be ignorant. History turns in circles and nobody changes. I wanted to end my old self, and I did. Hopefully as I wanted to, finally as I intended to. July is ahead of me.

Now I only have some mending to do.