by Nhi
Tonight is a night that fills me with emotions and a desire to share my thoughts through writing. Quiet night, warm drink, calm heart. I am writing and listening to these melodies.
Tag: blogging
Is This Spring?
Spring is the time of year when it is summer in the sun and winter in the shade — Charles Dickens
Continue reading “Is This Spring?”
Private Conversation with Mom
By Nhi
You weren’t here. But I conversed with you, privately and intimately, in my head. I carried on with the conversations that were without conclusions. Walking on the streets, I wrapped my hands around the coffee cup so that my inner hands would feel warmer. That meant the other side of my hands was tortured by the freezing temperature in mid-January. I put my earphones on so that it looked like I was on the phone if a passerby noticed that I was talking. Not that the person would care. We had so many people talking to themselves in New York that it would be odd to wonder why. I steered my eyes to meet a corner of the street, where an unkempt bald man had been sitting for days with the same posture and face expression and clothes. The winds were whipping my thick jacket. One, after another. I weighed 168 pounds but I was vulnerable against the force of nature. I felt like I might fall. Dirt scratched my skin, my eyes and my lips. I looked at him. He had a thin blanket that he used to cover his whole body. He was looking down, onto something that seemed to be nothing. My hair smelled horrible. His carelessly cut sign said, “No home, no jobs, no family”. I walked to him, taking a crumpled dollar out of my pocket. That single didn’t belong to me. I picked it up while I was walking about twenty minutes ago. I am doing kindness on behalf of another person who dropped their money.
Mom, You Used to Teach Me
By Nhi
When I was a small boy, my favorite motion was curling and stretching my tiny legs on your lap during weekend, when we took the bus to visit grandmother’s house. Contrast to Western parents who championed independence by encouraging kids to be on their own seats, you wanted to cover me with your arms. When I asked you why you didn’t let me be on my own, you reasoned that it would be too selfish for a child to occupy a vacant seat. The bus was packed with other adults who needed rest in the midst of “horrors of life”. You thought so.
Mom, do you love me?
My pride furrowed my forehead. I rolled my eyes to show that I was very upset with you, climbing on your lap and folding my arms so that you would have to thread your fingers around my belly instead of my chest. To strangers, I looked like an obedient three-year-old embarking on the first phase of rebellion. I succeeded. In pretending. Inside, my childish heart was boiled with fierce ecstasy, of which fragile moments I could never touch again, even when my lips were overwhelmed by that chocolate moment of first kiss when I turned sixteen. Time stopped. The cessation of time made my ink of happiness stop being absorbed into my gestures. I stayed still. I stared out of the window. I glanced at the grizzled man holding a bag of bread and sausages on our right. I squinted at the fashionable woman sitting before us, who passionately tapped on usernames of her Instagram friends as a poisoning habit, but didn’t linger to look closely at even one picture they posted. I fingered your smooth skin. How warm it was.
Confronted with Art
(by Cu)
“He (Giacometti) looks at his wife so closely that he doesn’t recognize her anymore after a long time. He begins to see the flesh and the material on her face that changes every day. Me too, I don’t think I’ve ever recognized one of my own sons.”
The words of the teacher lingered in my mind as I entered the city’s main station. Around me were people of all ages, all genders and with all kinds of emotions. I saw their eyebrows pulled together so that a small “frown” creased their foreheads, their lips moving to make different forms and to produce a certain vibration called “sound”, their legs and arms swinging in the air to make “movements” and to help them catch the incoming train. I wondered how we people could see each other as “people” most of the time, while these passengers around me appeared as if they were merely made of material and all the rest was but an incomprehensible chaos in a great void inside each person. Yet, they were more human than ever because they didn’t appear human at all. My perception of others and of myself as moving life forms didn’t match my teacher’s words perfectly, but they spoke to me in a particular way that I didn’t understand.
< One of the first posters I’ve made for my design class, which was rejected, but which represents how I sometimes see the world. Does anyone here also feel like a banana at times?
I caught the train back home every Friday afternoon with the same confusion in my head. As it had been a good decision to enter the Academy so as to learn, I had been able to leave the Image Analysis class every week with new insights into how some artists worked and reached their results, together with their stories, fears and perspectives. However, I’d always failed to find their works lovely. Though it had always been interesting to listen to the teacher describing their work process, it had seemed to me as though I’d been studying works of literature at secondary school: You read them out loud. You muse on each sentence or each verse in silence. You contemplate the beauty and try to understand or to ignore the content, then look further into the authors’ biographies. You think you’ve known everything that is to know about those works when you’re able to repeat everything you’ve learned or write long texts analyzing them; but at the end you realize that they are all very distant. Interesting, beautifully explained, but distant.
How could a mere student like me, someone who was supposed to learn from these experienced artists, have the privilege of judging their works as not being lovely? How could I allow myself to be so subjective? Or was subjectivity part of the art world?
It was for me sometimes like a walk in a museum: you stride along the museum walls, passing from one artwork to another. Sometimes you walk with awe, most of the time with the mere attempt to appreciate a piece of art that you know nothing about, or for which explanations you don’t even understand. Panamarenko, Walter Swennen, Karl Philips, Vaast Colson,…, those whose works I would never be able to appreciate without any explanation. The word “beautiful” that the teacher often used to describe their works slipped my mind. Yet I tried to convince myself that it was me who didn’t yet have much knowledge about art in general or modern art in particular, and my responsibility was to learn more, for I didn’t want to be or to appear vain. I didn’t understand but at the same time I didn’t want to let go and to utter what most museum visitors said at the end of the day: “Well, that was it. That was art.” Still it was the reason why I’d always hesitated to visit museums and expositions. I was afraid of not understanding, and this fear had gradually become negligence.
Then there came a particular Friday on which everything suddenly seemed to fall into place, as the teacher looked around the class and said: “I didn’t show you the works of these old artists so as to talk to you about them. This whole thing is about you.” Words bounced off walls, threaded their way through the seats and lingered at some corners of the room. Though my design teacher had once said that he found it difficult to have to explain design using words, I was quite sure at this very moment that words, just like designs, could influence people in such an amazing and unexplainable way. The artists’ works appeared much less distant from that point on. That distance had always been the gap I’d created between them and myself, for I’d always felt so small in front of these people, and the urge to learn had formed my fear of being vain.
“I am stupid, because I cannot see the image”, answered the teacher to another student a few minutes later on why he never became an artist.
I am, too. And I guess we all are somehow.
“Shut Up!”
I have realized that I am a little slow in posting photos to finish the Summer Photography Challenge that we talked about a while ago. Yet, a challenge is a challenge and we haven’t forgotten about it. Cu has recently told me that she would like to do this challenge for our next summer, with the same 20 topics. I like the idea, but I thought we may try to incorporate new material into the challenge to make it more fun.
The 10th topic for the challenge is: “Shut Up”. The oddity of these two photos makes me feel uneasy. But considering the relevancy that they have with the topic, I think that at least, we make use of some creativity.
Other topics we have taken photos of:
1. Speed 2. You thought you would never take a photo of this 3. Colors of the wind 4. 1000 steps
5. Tales of 1001 nights 6. Catching Sunrise 7. Love at First Sight 8. Top of the World
9. Sound
Worldlittlelights 