Recently I have been to China quite often. That is, on the 1st of March, I am flying from Beijing back to Vienna for the third time in 2019 already. It has been relatively warm this time around in Beijing. Two weeks ago I was visiting the Forbidden City on a rare snowy day - the grandeur and grace of the magnificent ancient buildings shone in a different light as I hurried through them following the incredibly large crowd. I did not take much time to appreciate it. As a matter of fact, I did not take much time to appreciate anything. I am simply chased around by some ghostlike pressure without a particularly convincing reason and a specification of a destination.
Last night, I went to the well-frequented Mei Bar in the center of the CBD district with two colleagues as a ritual to conclude a long business trip. It happened to be Ladies’ Night on Thursday. There were lots of ladies and gentlemen alike. People of all ages and nationalities, some dressed up and some in T-shirt and sweatpants, some in groups and some circling the bar alone, some innocently having fun and some discreetly searching for something else, some drinking without dancing and some dancing without drinking, some filled with joy and some with boredom. The playlist seems to always be the same - even the live band performance is exactly the same every time (this was my third time there). I was standing there, immersed in the music too loud for one simple exchange of words, holding my old-fashioned and watching the group of tall pretty Russian-looking girls in front of me, and strangely felt nothing but peace. I guess living is a process of making peace, with the world but mostly with oneself. My colleagues pointed to a lady and whispered (or shouted, in this case there is no difference) to me that she is a prostitute named Mandy. Mandy is always in this bar and chats up with men about potential business opportunities. When I looked at her, she just started talking to a man in his late fifties or early sixties, casually-dressed and alone, and I possibly saw some loneliness in his eyes earlier. She had her back towards me so I could not see how she looked. I was curious so I kept looking. About five minutes later, Mandy turned around, went in a certain direction and disappeared into the depth of the bar. I had a quick glimpse of her. She looked absolutely normal. Normal dress and normal makeup. Nothing out of ordinary. Nothing can tell you that she is a prostitute, except for the cards she gives out to men that says, if you want to have sex, call me. The man also went in a certain direction some minutes later. I could not tell if that was the same direction. My colleague asserted that there were many prostitutes like Mandy there. I wonder if the Mandys are living a particularly fulfilling life. Sometimes the bustling of a city gives you the illusion that you are caught up in something important, something larger than yourself. You’re compelled to do something about it. The highest skyscrapers, glamorous and glittering, make everything seem out of proportion. In a big city, you ought to do something out of ordinary just to prove that you are not less than ordinary. Hope we all find a place in this world.
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It’s been a while since I really sat myself down to write something. It’s been a while since I was really touched or amazed or surprised by something, someone. Everything seems to be just a matter of course, regular and predictable, which is fine, and depending on the point of view could even be considered as a rather positive circumstance. Summer passed and winter sneaked back in with its typical bleak sunshine, leaving us not much space for dreaming about warm smiles from good-tempered and good-hearted strangers. Some nights I woke up from dreams that I couldn’t recall, not even for a second after waking up. It must be for the best.
There have been many well-articulated and well-marketed ideas or ideologies that we as human beings living in so-called modern and civilized societies feel inevitably compelled to accept, especially when confronted by fellow civilized human beings, as the ultimate and only truth. Democracy. Equality. Diversity. Inclusion. Freedom of speech, which in itself lies a paradox. Maybe I am too much influenced by the West. Many of my Chinese friends might not care too much for them. The first question is, if they are at all, as advertised, the best ways. The second question is, whether they are at all achievable goals. Of course, I suppose everything is possible when put into the timeframe of eternity. I suppose all those heroes in history somehow saw beyond their lifetime and into eternity. The other night we went into a bar in Cape Town. The poster outside indicated that there was a show that night. It turned out to be a stand-up comedy with a certain Nik, possibly a known comedian in South Africa. Before he started there was a short opening show from a big black girl. I am merely trying to state the fact. She gave a rather funny performance and showcased a vivid personality with rich body language. At some point, she made a joke about how she preferred to have sex with a fat guy. I looked around the bar. There were well over 30 people, all white (excluding me). Then all the bartenders and waiters were black. On the stage a fat young black girl was telling sexual jokes about being black, female and fat. There must be something wrong about it, right? But then if a joke can be told about an average-weight white male, why not a fat black female? What does equality mean? A very thin woman stopped us on the street one night after a failed attempt with two other girls. She said, I don’t want your money. I haven’t eaten for two days and I’m hungry. Can you please buy me something to eat? If this would be in Europe or China, I would not give her a second look. But she seemed genuinely hungry. We agreed to her proposal and followed her into a small grocery shop that was conveniently located beside us. It took her a few seconds to find all the stuff she wanted, and they cost 30 euros. We were surprised and said that’s too much. She reduced her items very skilfully until it magically reached the exact amount we said we were ready to pay. When we walked out of the shop, we had a discussion whether the shop owner and the woman had some kind of a cooperation deal. Still I couldn’t get indignant or anything about the obvious scam. I myself have almost forgotten how it feels to be hungry. Who am I to judge that poor thin woman? In the gorgeously decorated guest house where we stayed for five nights in Cape Town, every morning some black women served us breakfast. All of them were extremely friendly but only one of them did not shy away from having prolonged conversations with us. She said she’s been working there for fourteen years. She said she wants to go to Germany and have a better life. She said she will take her teenage boy and never come back. She laughed heartily with a peculiar facial expression, a mixture of desperation and resolution, despair and hope. The morning we left, we bade each other goodbye on the porch in front of the impressive house. The sun was brutal for a spring day. We often say, it’s gonna be okay. “Okay” is really just a subjective perception. With a certain amount of getting-used-to, everything is indeed okay. Around my turning 30, my girlfriend group has been talking extensively about skincare on WeChat. They were sharing experience about Japanese gadgets and products that cost thousands of euros (next time you say Asians look young, think twice about how much time and money they invest in such a cause). As the laggard consumer living in Europe, I learned a great deal and was ready to buy everything my girlfriends recommended (some kind of crisis for sure). Then we were sitting in an Uber talking with the Zimbabwean driver that has to save money to take a bus to go back home once a year. Another driver told us since Uber came to threaten the taxi business, their salary was cut in half or even less. And I was watching all those black workers (not a single white one) lying by the street side to take a nap under the scorching sun. How much can you see as a passing tourist? How much can you see as a tiny person living in a tiny bubble of your own upbringing and surroundings? Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true, or is it something worse? May all our dreams come true in this lifetime. I recently picked up a book from Maugham again. It is a collection of five short stories and three novels, including The Moon and Sixpence. The reason was simple: I wanted to enjoy a pleasant read. Many times I waded arduously through an abstruse vocabulary without reaching anywhere proportionally meaningful. Of course, it might have been my own lack of understanding. In any case, Maugham rarely disappoints me. In the morning flight a few days ago, I opened the unusually heavy book and finished the story The Pool.
The story is quite straightforward. Lawson, a well-educated white Scottish man with a decent job in a bank, fell in love with a beautiful "half-caste" girl Ethel on one of the colonial Samoan islands and married her. He took them back to Scottland, partly because he wanted to give them a more comfortable life and a better future for their dark-skinned son, and partly because he could not bare the island life anymore. However, Ethel grew increasingly homesick and dissatisfied and one day, she left with their son without warning. Lawson, madly in love and not being able to imagine a life without Ethel, went after her, while knowing he would detest his life there. But it was inevitable that he lost his love, his job, his dignity, his home, his health, his social status, his everything. He succumbed to alcoholism. He was despised by people around him, including Ethel. He drowned himself in the pool where he first fell in love with Ethel. Now I forgot why I thought it necessary to re-tell the story. Beside the moral of the story, I wonder, will we all be sensing that calling from home sooner or later? Will there always be a part of me that yearns to go back? The Pool was written in 1921, almost a century ago, but aren't we today still struggling for more or less the same fundamental reasons? Sometimes it feels like, the evolution of humanity resembles the growing-up of one single person - the very core of who you are was determined in the very early years of your life; later on you just change and adapt on a superficial level. What held true hundreds of years ago still holds true today. Well it's just a thought. 快到周末的时候,老马跟我说,到看流星的时节(la notte di San Lorenzo)了。我随便应了一声,后来不经意间提到一句,我好像从来都没有看到过流星,至少没有有意识的记忆。其实我也从来都没有在自己有没有看到过流星这件事上有过任何纠结。但老马听了反应激烈,仿佛我此生蒙受了莫大的委屈,星期六提议说当天晚上去看流星,问我是否愿意。我当时正在为不知什么小事生闷气,点点头啥都没说。老马就擅自谷歌出一个在维也纳附近看流星的好去处,也不怕德语网页没读懂,晚上十点多拉着毫无劲头的我,出门前还确保我穿好了衣服和球鞋,然后开着摩托车向城外开去。
虽是盛夏时节,周末刚好降温,夜晚的冷风从我们身体的一侧穿向另一侧,似乎在发出嘲讽的声音。我还在继续生着气,夹杂在这冷风之上,转化成一种莫名的悲从中来。我想念家中温暖的被窝和Netflix上一点都不可笑的美国喜剧片。我们渐渐驶出市区,将并不怎么绚烂的小城市灯火抛在身后。公路上没有路灯,只有安静行驶的车辆冰冷地打着车灯,勉强照亮前方的地面。我偶然抬起头看了看天空,没想到只是二十分钟的距离之外,竟是满天繁星。我于是试图保持仰头的姿势。我们正前方是北斗七星,周围有许多似曾相识的形状,可惜我没有好好学习星座。我想起我印象中这样的星空。印度Pushkar的郊区、摩洛哥某沙漠以及约旦Wadi Rum。我想起我们在Wadi Rum露营的时候,夜幕降临后,营地的向导带我们去一块大石头后面的平地上面看星星。大石头刚好挡住月光,我躺在地上,面对漫天的星星竟感到有些不知所措。向导拿出手机打开一个App,专门用来识别星座,只要用手机对着某个方向,App里的星座图就会跟着移动。我举着手机看了好久,真的识别出好多个星座,有一种非常纯粹的成就感,仿佛自己与宇宙的距离拉近了。要是此刻我有那个App就好了,我想。我试图目不转睛地盯着天空,后来有几次我觉得我看到了流星,一颗星星划出了一条线,可是我又不确定那是流星,因为盯久了好像满天的星星都在流动,化作一个巨大的礼花冲我飞来。我突然不生气了。 停车之后,我们又在阴森的田间小道步行了一刻多钟才到达目的地,其间好几次我都怕会有妖怪从玉米地里钻出来,老马还在旁呵斥我不要把手电筒光打太亮。我们在黑暗中找了一块地坐下来,周围有人压低声音聊天,但很难看出到底有多少人。此时的天气已经非常冷,我感到手脚冰凉。每次有流星划过的时候,都会传来一声整齐的惊呼,也是压低声音。每次惊呼之后,老马都会问我,你看到了吗,看到了吗。我好几次都真的没有看到,但也有几次是看到了。我依然觉得流星没有什么特别的,眨眼的瞬间,微小到可以忽略,看到了怎样,没看到又怎样,什么都改变不了。 回到家我又困又累又冷,一句话都没多说倒头便睡。第二天下午我突然想起来,拉住老马说,谢谢你昨天带我去看流星。他说,不用谢,没想到天那么冷。 今晚在tunnel看了一场小众音乐会,一支来自波兰北部格但斯克叫做immortal onion的乐队,风格混杂爵士、电子和金属等。乐队三个成员看上去像是十来岁的小朋友,发言时也稚气十足,后来临走前专门上去搭讪,才知道其实都是二十出头的样子。整场只坐了三桌人,其中一组还仿佛是在街头失去方向不得已进来的年轻游客。第四桌坐着一个短发女子,手中捧着一个用来收钱的罐子,上面写着:最少五欧。中间进来一个扎着一大头脏辫的男人,坐在短发女子那桌,看不出轮廓的身体在T恤里晃荡,他有着所有扎脏辫的人固有的肢体语言和神态,不屑一顾地,随着音乐摇摆与尖叫。我盯着他看了一会儿,觉得他让我想起了一些东西,一些过往,一些可能性。 鼓手小哥用不太流利的英文说:你们给我们钱,我们才能回到格但斯克。一观众问:不然呢,你们会留在维也纳吗。小哥说:不会吧,可是我们也许就要去洗盘子了。众人笑。 很多时候生活把我们跟特定的人放在一个场景里,让我们误以为,这一刻如此特别,命运让我们相遇在此。事实上,我们只是碰巧出现在同一个画框里罢了,脏辫小哥会摇摆着尖叫着继续旁若无人地生活,鼓手小哥会去下个城市接着讲洗盘子的笑话,而我,明天此时就会忘了他们的样子。 Today I watched a small concert at Tunnel. The band Immortal Onion comes from Gdansk, a northern city in Poland. Their music is a mixture of jazz, electronic, metal and other genres. The three band members looked like teenagers and talked very childishly during the concert. Before leaving, my curiosity drove me to go up and ask them how old they were. It turned out they were all in their early 20s. During the entire concert, only three tables were occupied by spectators, one group of which seemed to be young tourists lost on the street and didn't see any other option as to where to go. At the fourth table sat a woman with short hair, holding a box intended for collecting money. It's written on the box: minimum amount 5 euros. At some point a guy with dreadlocks came in and joined the short-haired woman at the table. His slim body was shaking in the not so wide T-shirt without displaying its silhouette. He had the same body language and facial expression as all the people who have dreadlocks. Nonchalant, he swung and screamed along with the music. I stared at him for a bit, having the feeling that he reminded me of something, some past, some possibilities.
We have to use the money you give us to go back to the north of Poland, the dummer said in not so fluent English. Someone from the audience said, otherwise you will stay here in Vienna? No, but maybe we will have to wash some dishes, he answered. A laughter burst out. Many times life puts us in a certain situation with certain people to make us falsely believe that this moment is so unique because destiny brought us here. As a matter of fact, we just coincidentally appeared in the same picture frame, that's all. The guy with dreadlocks will swing and scream and live his life without caring much about what others have to say. The drummer will tell the joke about washing dishes again in the next city on the tour. And me, I will forget them by this time tomorrow. - the end - What people repeatedly tell us, and what we generally find true, is that we tend to regret about things we didn't do instead of things we did do. So let's take a moment to think about what this really means - when we say we only regret about things that we didn't do and not about the things that we did do. We rarely do nothing at all. And how many times in life have we been faced with exactly one possible course of action? Then we would have taken that course of action since there were no other possibilities. When we say we didn't do something, we most likely don't mean that we were in an absolute state of inaction, but rather that we didn't do this one particular thing. Most likely, we didn't do A because we did B (A and B are things... obviously), or we didn't do A so that we could do B. In either case, we can not separate not doing A from doing B. If our premise remains that we only regret about things we didn't do and never about things we did do, then we regret that we didn't do A but in the meantime we don't regret that we did B. Since not doing A is the precondition of us being able to do B, we should not regret not doing A as well. Of course, in the usual context it's always a new thing versus an old thing: starting a startup versus staying at the old job, traveling the world versus staying at home, so on and so forth. But carrying forward what one has been doing does not necessarily yield less exciting results as taking on a new challenge. Not staying on is also a form of not doing something. But by not staying on we got to do something else. Just like by not doing a new thing we got to stay on.
So regret is inevitable and by all means justifiable, but no regret should always be the final attitude. About two weeks ago I went on a somewhat exotic trip with one of my best friends since middle school. Since 2000, that would be. We became friends after we were assigned to share a desk from the very beginning, the usual way of making friends in our youthful years, full of happy or unfortunate coincidences. I've always considered it to be one of the best things that has ever happened to me. There's really nothing better than having some intelligent, fun, loving and morally upright companions throughout one's learning and trying years. What made you who you are? Didn't your path adjust itself every time you decided to befriend A, not B?
We went to the same high school but were in different classes, thus hung out less. We went to universities in different cities, thus at most saw each other once a year. The last time we met was in 2013 in Salzburg, when I first moved to Vienna and she was living in Nice. The time before last was in 2011 in Florence, when I was shortly living in Florence and she was living in Nice. Some years ago she moved back to China. I'm not the greatest at staying in touch, but friends as such don't require any stay-in-touch formality, or so I should hope. I originally planned to fly to Cape Verde alone for two weeks just because it is allegedly warm there in November. I shared this plan with her in one of our brief exchanges of messages, and she said, are you inviting me to come along? I was reasonably excited. In the end, we concluded that Cape Verde was too far away from China and we should go to Jordan and Israel instead. I could never forget what Maugham famously said, “We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.” Now that can be applied in a much broader sense than the one person that we are supposed to love more than others. And on that note, I picked up this bestselling book at the airport, What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions (actually I picked up Optimism over Despair at the airport and ordered this one on Amazon because I did not want to pay the premium for airport placement twice). It contains the question "what if everyone had only one soulmate in this world". I haven't read it yet but I think the answer can be summarized into "thank god that's not the case". Ok back to Maugham's wisdom and my title of this entry. If we are all constantly changing and we are not lucky enough to be around each other to witness those changes, is our knowledge of each other based solely on a past that's obsolete, thus rendering our knowledge obsolete? Are we allowed to claim to know someone if we only know them from a time that is not the present? When our memory starts to shatter and there is nothing new to fill that void in the shape of our helplessness in retaining what is bound to be gone. Why is it that our memories of the earlier years seem to be much more solid than those formed later? Why is it that we would, despite our lack of current knowledge of each other, despite our inability to even lead a meaningful conversation at times, still choose to put each other before others, who are perhaps much more relevant to our life in the present tense? Why is it that we sometimes attach such a disproportionate value to our past? Is it because we are afraid that we won't know who we are if we are without our past? I guess "I know someone" is after all a rather general term. No one would challenge me if I say I know my neighbor, with whom I only conversed once under a somewhat coerced circumstance. I guess my point is, things are never to be taken out of context to be evaluated. That you are invaluable to me must not be simply understood as an ephemeral statement that is almost based on an impulse, but rather be put into the context of a lifetime. Maybe that's why tears always come to my mind but stop before rushing out of my eyes when I listen to Jay Chou's earlier albums. Very rarely do I think of listening to them, really. That's the perpetual wrestling between the transitory present me and the me that is the sum of my whole life. Forgive me for putting random reading and random thoughts together like this.
Wissen beginnt in ihren Augen mit der Erkenntnis der Täuschungen durch die Wahrnehmungen unseres sogenannten gesunden Menschenverstandes; nicht nur in dem Sinn, daß unser Bild der physischen Realität nicht der "tatsächlichen Wirklichkeit" entspricht, sondern insbesondere in dem Sinn, daß die meisten Menschen halb wachen und halb träumen und nicht gewahr sind, daß das meiste dessen, was sie für wahr und selbstverständlich halten, Illusionen sind, die durch den suggestiven Einfluß des gesellschaftlichen Umfelds hervorgerufen werden, in dem sie leben. Wissen beginnt demnach mit der Zerstörung von Täuschungen, mit der "Enttäuschung". Wissen bedeutet, durch die Oberfläche zu den Wurzeln und damit zu den Ursachen vorzudringen, die Realität in ihrer Nacktheit zu "sehen". Wissen bedeutet nicht, im Besitz von Wahrheit zu sein, sondern durch die Oberfläche zu dringen und kritisch und tätig nach immer größerer Annäherung an die Wahrheit zu streben. In Person of Interest, Sameen Shaw was put through over 7000 simulations in which she was expected to turn on her friends before she finally escaped. Then she realized there was no way for her to distinguish reality from simulations anymore. Or maybe, the reality was just one version of the simulations, in a broader sense. Kazuo Ishiguro, the new Nobel Prize winner described his way to boost productivity, "in this way, I'd not only complete more work quantitively, but reach a mental state in which my fictional world was more real to me than the actual one". And who says we're not the dictator of our own realities. Die Wahrheit ist, daß es kein solches Ding wie "Liebe" gibt. "Liebe" ist eine Abstraktion; vielleicht eine Göttin oder ein fremdes Wesen, obwohl niemand je diese Göttin gesehen hat. In Wirklichkeit gibt es nur den Akt des Liebens. "The truth is, there is no such thing as love; there exists only the act of loving." Now doesn't that sound painfully familiar. Haven't we all learned something from life after all. Two years ago I saw this installation "More Sweetly Play the Dance" by William Kentridge at the Eye Museum in Amsterdam. I possibly have written about this idea (for the lack of a better word) of endless procession in life. A few weeks ago in Paris, my friend insisted on going to Fondation Louis Vuitton for this exhibition of African artists. There, unexpectedly, I saw another installation "Notes towards a Model Opera" by him, which brilliantly combines elements with reference to the cultural revolution with the Chinese version of the L'Internationale as the theme music. We sat there for a long time, contemplating on the past that we did not live and the future that we do not yet know. Back to the topic of understanding art - I am never sure that I understand what the artist intends to impart. That's also the beauty of art - you take what you need, you see what you want to see. Then I started reading this book Six Drawing Lessons by William Kentridge (Norton lectures). It could be about drawing but also could be about everything. Let me just share a few paragraphs.
From this, Plato tells us, comes the ethical imperative of the philosopher. The man who has seen the light and apprehended the understanding that follows from it has a duty to return to the cave, to unshackle those in darkness, and to bring them up from the cave into the light. If necessary, this must be done with force. The nexus of enlightenment, emancipation, and violence emerges. Our agenda has been set. Mozart wrote The Magic Flute in 1791, when an optimism and clear belief in Enlightenment were possible. Such an optimism is no longer available. It is not that every act of violence has had its public relations, its brochures, its paintings and murals of a better life. But rather, and more difficult to apprehend, is that every act of enlightenment, all the missions to save souls, all the best impulses, are so dogged by the weight of what follows them: their shadow, the violence that has accompanied enlightenment. Caught with the question of what place these elements of the spirit of the mind of ideals can have today, or whether - and this seems impossible to accept - that every impulse for good, for generosity, for emancipation, is flawed, an impotent structure floating above a world of realpolitik and violence, takeovers and mergers. The contradiction continues, of a continent being assessed from outside itself for what it is, as if the long view, in which the entire continent can fit onto a single page of a map, in which all its differences can be obliterated in a single thought, continues today. It is unclear what makes the continent. Genetics? History? Tradition? And whether talking of a continent makes any sense, except as the locus, the provocation, for the discussion of African-ness itself. Knowing that when we put up a sign or a label - this event happened in this place, this monument is erected to the memory of - we admit defeat. We hand the responsibility of memory to the sign, to the object. It becomes a canned memory, like canned laughter on a TV show, which laughs on our behalf, it remembers on our behalf, it does the work for us. We are let off the hook. I feel like my own words are inadequate at this point. Next time. Every time I read an autobiography (or just a biography, for that matter), in this case Little Wilson and Big God, part of me cannot stop wondering why I should spend my precious time strenuously going through the mundane details from another person's life, not only irrelevant to me but also bygone and obsolete to the author him- or herself. I don't know what we are looking for in this, if we are looking for something at all. The similarity that consoles us or the contrast that strikes us? What would you rather find out, that we are all the same or we are all so different from one another that we can hardly be considered the same kind of creature? The same thing I wonder about my own songs and words. How much do those who hear/see them really understand? And even if they do understand, do they understand it the way it is intended? It's just some very general wondering that presents itself once in a while.
In a song from the new album of Sun Kil Moon with radically expressed and lengthy lyrics, I heard these lines: Maybe you can't relate to this song Maybe you're a millennial and you don't know the references at all Maybe you'll hear it and say, "I prefer your older songs." Or maybe the world has changed and I'm not that songwriter anymore It did cross my mind, "I prefer your older songs". Maybe the world has changed and he is not that songwriter anymore. And so what. What do we live for. What is better for a songwriter, to be appreciated by millions because your songs are ceaselessly repeated like a broken record on the radio in the clubs in the shops that sell things you would rather yourself not be associated to but then so what, or by one person who truly hears what you mean and the vulnerability that you had to reveal in your songs because without that vulnerability you are no longer you. It's not a rhetoric question; I do not know what is better. I never know what is better. I don't think there is one option that is better than another option on all fronts, in all dimensions including those we do not yet know. Maybe that's why you need that autobiography. That's why you need to create some evidence of your existence. That's why you need the songs you wrote when you were 20 and also the songs you wrote when you were 50. Not to see which is better. Not to be judged how much you changed. But to be sure that you did live your life through all those years, when one day your memory starts to shatter. |
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