oktoeverything-blog

[oktoeverything-blog]

FA1L

It’s May!

The result of D&AD New Blood Awards has just been announced. And it shows ‘unsuccessful’, from a breath-holding ‘pending’ throughout the day.

It’s 11:30 in the evening. I have a complexed feeling at the moment. Of course I’m disappointed. Like, I know the execution was bad, just as my final major project - I did it on the airplane from London to Shanghai, and the following two days. But I was confident at the idea. The reason I was really looking forward to winning this prize was that the idea I used here is the same one in my final major project, but more of a fit - the flaneur. It perfectly answers the brief to be honest. I still don’t regret for this idea even now. So I thought, if it could win the award, it could make up for the regret in my final project. Like, I find a fit landing place for my idea. But it turned out I failed twice at the execution.

I say a complexed feeling because when I was feeling very discouraged few minutes ago, I could also feel the opposite situation a month ago, when I was facing the offers from both W+K and Superunion (and Nike). That proud and also a bit overwhelming feeling is right here, staring at me. I can’t help judging myself, with some ego and some doubts.

Certainly I shouldn’t judge myself accordingly to others? But also certainly we coordinate ourselves by others’ feedbacks. Yes I could say, I’m only a starter and has only spent one year in the design area. But another feeling haunts me, of having chosen the wrong direction possibly, of losing the game not in this one but probably in many others too, of losing again in the coming future.

It’s May. It’s hard to believe nearly half of the year has been passed. I hate to lose. It’s my biggest fear maybe. And I know exactly where it comes from, how it has formed to so, and why I couldn’t get over it. Maybe it’s my very limitation, that I couldn’t let go the failure. And the only solution is to win, I assume?

“Look, if you had, one shot, or one opportunity. To seize everything you ever wanted, in one moment. Would you capture it, or just let it slip?” as a metaphor in life since young.

:(

[oktoeverything-blog]

Sad New Year

I’m sitting on a navy blue bench at Barbican. A pigeon totters by beneath my bench. I’m facing a lake of withered reed, above which surrounds a curve of classic grey brutalist buildings. It’s the first day of the New Year, Chinese New Year of course. No festive vibe here in London at all. It’s pretty nice actually, this defamiliarised feeling - it arouse a strong sensation of the link among an individual, a place, and time. Yesterday, I was in hospital taking a blood test, because of my recent allergy. I didn’t necessarily need to go, but there was an invitation of celebrating New Year Eve together with a group of people, and I’m a bit explicitly anti-people since last Saturday, so instead I went to the hospital.

These post-student days have been weird for me. I’m feeling an inexpressible confusion and uncertainty. At first I thought it was just a normal shift between being a student and being a nine-to-five. All of a sudden I lost the sense of goal, like everything I’m working on is fragmented and temporary; all I did were to exchange for the money to earn a living. I went for a few interviews, started doing some projects; I started to binge watching films again, being ashamed for only having watched 33 last year; I tried to sleep early, failed as usual; I forced myself to retrieve the habit of reading everyday, and to quit the social media, as well as socializing in real life. People disturb me too much that I can hardly bear with. I used to be very nice to people, smile all the time, and respond swiftly and positively. I’m not boasting it as if I’m a super good person; I’m just used to that personality that I can’t help displaying it to others. But since last Saturday, I felt I was able to change. I don’t know. I was irritated by a social event that day, and all my ego, or say anti-others mood, was activated and amplified. The priority of caring goes to myself than to others even I’m in the crowds.

And that feeling of uncertainty, I gradually realized after a recent interview, was not due to student/worker role’s shift; it’s the stable value system that I’ve lost. (All that was solid melt into the air.) On that interview, I was talking to a man who claimed to be the ex-director of ICA. He asked me about my study in LCC, and I said something about my confused experience from a critical theory background to this commercial-mode practice. He didn’t respond to that. After the interview I thought, why did I say that. It must be a totally different context for him as a practicer in creative industry, from the narrative I’m familiar with in college. And I realized, there is a real gap, not only in my educational experience, but in real world that a cultural theorist, for instance, shares such a different perspective and belief, if any, from a designer. And I am particularly situated in this gap, confusedly struggling, can’t find a place to settle my own belief. That’s how it is, and how it has been these months.

I’m now sitting inside the Barbican Centre. I watched a cool installation film, bought a gift for my roommate, and am a bit hungry now. I always like Barbican, and today I realized the reason is that we both are a misfit. The world doesn’t care about me, vice versa. This is the first day of the New Year, Chinese New Year of course; I’m glad I’m here, alone, placid.

[oktoeverything-blog]

b o a t

Today is a normal bad day. I had a normal bad sleep. And a normal bad luck.

M came to see me. When I saw her at the gate with a bunch of flower, I was almost in tears. Before that, I was lying on the table near the window in the studio, hearing the sound of street, trying to figure out what emotion should I reacted to everything happened to me.

I bought her a lunch. We talked happily. She is the angel of my day. And we wandered in the show. Happy time never last long. Around 5, She went to an appointment. I went to the M&M World and Lego. I wanted to buy a Minecraft model, but figured I’m no longer a kid. So instead I bought this:

Then I went home.

I walked to take the bus 87. I walked and walked. I lost, as normal. Google Map sucks. Somehow I walked to a place near the river. I checked Google Map again, and the boat option pop up. (I know it’s not called boat, but I don’t care.) It sort of lightened up my mood. So I walked to the Embankment Pier and take the boat. I like boat. I used to take a boat trip (well, a cruise tour) with my parents from China to Japan and Korea. Five days on the sea. It was boring but memorable. Every time I recalled it, I found it romantic. More romantically, I lost all the photos on that trip by accident.

Anyway. I was on the boat from Embankment to St George Wharf. It was quiet. I was with my Lego and flower, alone. It reminded me of Hong Kong’s Star Ferry, but more quite and sad. Yet somehow, when I was looking at the river, the metropolitan night lights reflected on the water surface, and an old man in the boat sitting by a table, probably playing his word puzzle, with a bottle of red wine, I felt a peace in my sadness.

I miss my friends. The real friends. I miss me one year ago, when I was positive, and people I met were all good.

When I was sitting in the boat, I saw the lights and water blurred because of my near-sightedness. Few days ago I talked to my mom about my feelings, my mom said: why you live in such a sober way? She’s right. But what else can I do?

Maybe it’s all dog year’s bad luck. Or maybe these were all what I deserved.

[oktoeverything-blog]

i d i o s y n c r a s y

I drafted this diary in my head a few days ago at a late night, but after typing the subtitles I soon fell into sleep and haven’t really got time to finish them in words until now, when I’m in the canteen (for here has far fewer people, more sofas and walls, and higher ceiling than the lib) after a good supper in a Chinese restaurant, after a printing with very complicated setups, and after a long day following a less-than-six-hour sleep last night, meaning this morning.

The former subtitles were: project; writing; friend; teacher. But I don’t wanna continue to fill in each blank as it feels too laborious especially for now. Things are always like this that when you are super pressure and busy you won’t feel the tiredness because all you you think is to get the things down. But the moment you finally finish it, you, I mean I, I suddenly became so vulnerable, fragile and sensitive. I feel like I could cry out loud right now if I manage to, though nothing sad particularly. Or, in other words, everything is equally sad?

Yet by no mean I am finished. The work I’m printing out today and gonna bind tomorrow, is only one of those meaningless shitty rubbishes I’ve made. But I learnt from it, and I’m so thankful that I made it. An artist I like, also a PhD student in RCA, just wrote a post saying: “basically as long as you start to make things, you need to manually turn off the button of self-evaluation in your head; otherwise you won’t complete anything.” It totally speaks for my situation. The reason for I’m moved by today’s print is I know how much self-doubt (partly on myself and partly on the gonna-be outcome) and critics I’ve been gone through with me, and I still bear the thing out, the process of which was definitely painful (when I’m with it) and beautiful (when I’m now a post-).

It looks like this:

I feel tired for many things recently. ‘Friends’, yes and no. I’m a very careful user of the word friend. Do every other people have a lot of friends? I’ve got less than five, definitely less than five. Two. Probably. I wonder has friend become a really rubbish word for the sake of convenience in communication, or do people really not concern as much as I do by using the word friend? I use ‘classmate’, ‘someone I know’, ‘roommate’ etc. to refer whenever necessary. I don’t use the word friend. But I do have a place for what I called a potential friend. Like in my head it is a concentric category:

[ Can-never-be-a-friend [ Potential Friend [ FRIEND ] Potential ] Never ]

Most people are people who I would never identify as a friend, and very few are people I like, but not so close to, so might be a friend in the future. The inner circle and the outer circle lists are solid. If the stamp friend is sealed on you, then you are a BFF. Likewise if you didn’t get on my potential, you’ll never do.

I don’t know. I feel it ridiculous as much as you do, my reader. But that’s how my terminology works for friend. That’s it.

Can teacher be a friend? That might be one of great wonders I’m confused with these two years. Part of me has a very ideal imagination/myth in education, so I’m easily fond of a teacher. But recently I figured teachers are not obliged to make friend with a student, aren’t they? Never been and will never be. I’m fond of a teacher doesn’t mean s/he is fond of me. So why bother. Another thing stupid me just finally realised recently was that: I often communicate my attitude in a bloody obvious way. I’m those girls who would never be the first to articulate the fondness to a boy I’m fond of. But I just realised I would express it in all kinds of fucking foolish and obvious ways except saying it directly, to boys and girls, men and women I like.

That’s why I propose to hold it a little back. I didn’t mean to trouble those people at the first place. I kinda know how much the pressure is when someone shows too excessive love to you but you don’t really into that bond. I didn’t mean to act that way. It’s just I didn’t realise that I have done it in such an annoying and foolish way.

Last year in the last class held by one of my favourite professors, a student suggested the class take a picture together. So the professor agreed. Without a second thought I ran to the toilet, and sneaked away from the photograph. I’m the only one who was not in that photo. I know it sounds weird but what was in my head was: the professor didn’t want this photo; we wanted it. So it’s unfair. The photo should be longed by both sides otherwise it just didn’t make sense to me. Like it was a one way relationship. I know it’s just me, a weirdo. But that’s me.

But but but. But I’m gonna step back a little. Nice teachers, they are always on my potential friend list, but I tend to believe that I’ll never be their potentials. But that’s fine. L said I have a very honest personality that I’m good at communication and I tend to immediately say what I think. She said it in a plain way, neither positive nor negative. I never think of myself like that. I’m a bit surprise hearing her description. I thought I’m implicit. But I think she might be right.

So I propose to step back, hold on, shut up, and get the fucking FMP work down. Then it’s the time for a farewell, which happens all the time.

Guess growing up means to cover my naive honesty. And to camouflage, in the crowds.

(22/10/18)

-

A few updates.

Last night I was waiting for the bus 196. An old lady in the bus stop turned to me: “you have the phone. Look at how soon it would come.” I found it a bit funny, because usually the youth refers to a phone, while the old just waits. And now it’s the other way round. And it showed more than 15 minutes to come. Usually I would take 344 instead, but somehow I sat still. And then we talked a bit, since it was only two of us there. It wasn’t really an uncomfortable silence, but it was an atmosphere to talk. She guessed I’m a Japanese. She said she lost her cousin. I hesitated a bit. So she supplied, “she died.” Then I said I’m sorry to hear that. It’s just a normal chat I don’t know why I’m writing these, but then she gave me this card:

She said it’s from a Portugal god (?), and I shall always keep it with me. “Would help with your final exam.” She explained, as I told her I’m about to graduate, as she asked why my school finished so late. 

I think I’m recording these because last night felt like a film shot in a night. It cured me last night, after all my sensitive thoughts above. What is this card? What is this religion? What does it mean? I have no idea. And somehow, I don’t want to know. Usually, in a film, two plot lines would be shown to the audience, telling how precious or how worthless this card is, while in reality, I know nothing. To me, it isn’t about the religion at all. It’s just a nice gesture, an encounter, a serendipity. 

Is it romantic? I’m too tired for a further thought.

Also, I wasted another day today, but at least I’ve got the binding part done.

Later, my cyber self.

Time to write a report than a blog.

[oktoeverything-blog]

p u n c t u m

I was reading Barthes’ Studium and Punctum part in Camera Lucida tonight. 

I’ve read it once in a class of my previous MA named Visual Research Method, which really wasn’t about visual research but research on visual when I now recall it. On that class we were assigned as a group work to write a proposal of a(n) film/exhibition/festival by using five theories we've been taught in class. First of all, I never understand a collaborative writing thing, but fine like I don’t do collaboration anyway. (Second,) our group chose to write a film proposal, and the first theory we chose was Studium and Punctum, because it was the easiest in the obscure reading list. The only easier theory I could think of, among all the theories learnt from that course, is Front Stage and Back Stage by Erving Goffman. Barthes’ is just easy to read, while Goffman’s doesn’t even worth a write... Anyway, we proposed to make a film which ‘contains punctums’. The ‘solution’ we stated in the proposal was that we would avoid close-ups, so to leave the space for the audiences to spot the ‘punctum’, meaning the detail.

Simple, and absolutely bullshit. We were too careless that we didn’t even read that Barthes actually says it won’t work for a film in the following pages. He thinks the film, which is basically the moving images, doesn’t offer enough time to notice a punctum.

But it reminds me of one of my (published:) essays on Tsai Ming-liang and slow cinema, which I brought with Paul Virilio’s speed theory into discussion. I argued that the slow film serves as a still image, a pause, a revealing of time for the audience to think, and to perceive the in-screen fiction and out-screen reality simultaneously. Tonight after reading Barthes again, I realised instead of a blockbuster, a slow film might actually have the potential to trigger a punctum. 

I love theories, and I love design. Both of them are difficult if you want to achieve a high level. They are all about communication, one textual, one visual. But now my situation (happened serendipitously) is sort of a visual communicator who is also aware of some annoying visual theories? They are annoying because they prevent you from going for cliches and stereotypes, but you, meaning I, am not good enough to do something better, so often instead I end up with things worse than a cliche.

I’m always interested in the issue of writing and visualising. The mass (who are they?) tends to believe that writing is thinking and visualising is making? For me they are all doing. They are only different forms of concreting an intangible thinking/concept/idea in the mind. I’ve got no answer for which is harder, but I know if one wanna combine two, or at least balance two, it’s fucking difficult. People say if the book is so-so, the adapted film could be awesome; but if the book is already brilliant, the film won’t achieve higher. I kinda agree. Like if the text could articulate it well enough, why a film? Vice versa.

We got an A or A- for that punctum proposal. Now I could feel a little bit tutors in my current course. When everyone sucks, you end up with appraising someone who sucks less. Tutors of my previous MA, of this one, are all way too kind for us, for me. If I’m gonna be a teacher, I would probably be another Zizek, not in terms of academic, but in terms of having called his students idiots. I mean I won’t call them in the face, but they surely will annoy me and I’ve got very little patience. Or does every tutor think I’m an idiot in their mind like I as a tutor would possibly think alike?

What is education anyway? Why we are learning those theories we wouldn’t understand until ten years later or maybe never in a lifetime? Almost six months later, which is now, did I finally realise what to do with the stakeholder workshop. Am I below the average? Or is the way it’s been taught? Or what? Why school? Why lecture? Someone in the beginning of The Form of The Book Book quoted another one stating, here I paraphrasing: I don’t do lecture, as I could state my idea much clearer in a book. 

I have loads to say about education really. I’ve drafted it a lot in my head. But I’m gonna grab some sleep first, and I’ll figure out how to brand the punctum graphically tomorrow, if there’s any luck, because I have no idea at all. 

(sleepy face)

[oktoeverything-blog]

f l â n e u r

I might be a flâneur but I won’t be a flâneuse.

I saw this book in a Paris bookshop. I smiled when I saw its title. A lovely reverse, I thought. But just now I was researching on this figure (Charles Baudelaire’s flâneur), and I saw this book again. Then I felt a bit weird. 

Before the term flâneuse was animated, I could easily identify myself as a flâneur, though yes C.Baudelaire is a male, W.Benjamin is a male, and the illustration of the figure is a male. (don’t know where it comes from.) But I never perceive this figure in a masculine way. For me it’s in a default setting without a distinctive gender characteristic, until the flâneuse came into being. 

I understand this gender reversal of the figure aims to arouse people’s awareness of this privileged male figure and its underlying masculinity hegemony. 

“Elkin soon begins to think critically about whether or not a woman could be a spectator. Her answer is, simply, yes. ‘To suggest that there couldn’t be a female version of the flâneur is to limit the ways women have interacted with the city to the ways men have interacted with the city,’ she writes.” (TheNewRepublic)

Can a woman be a flâneur/se? It’s a question that shouldn’t be asked. It is this question, this statement, this shape of language that invented and reinforced the division of genders to this figure. One might argues that the masculine ideology is unconsciously impacting us/me. Even so, as a woman, I used to identify myself as a flâneur, and now it made me doubt if I could be one or not, and then it told me, you can. I haven’t doubted about it, thank you very much.

The issue here is: is flâneur a privileged figure? I have little knowledge of the life of women in 19th c. Maybe wandering on the street is a luxurious lifestyle for women of that time, but it no longer is, isn’t it? The book Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London was published in 2016. That’s all what I’m saying. I haven’t read a word of it, but it seems like a claptrap for me. And for W.Benjamin’s flâneur, the inequality lies not in gender but in class. The figure flâneur is actually a vulnerable figure under modern capitalism.

Also look at its cover! It seems to be a simple and smart solution to illustrate a flâneuse, but just think of it: if the author is a real feminist, would she agree to adopt this stereotypical pinky skirt? I don’t think the unconscious unequal gender structure shouldn’t be revealed. It’s just the way people are helping it is not smart enough. They try to get out of one trap, and they fall into another. The term ‘man’ and ‘woman’, or ‘-r’ and ‘-se’ are dead. The dichotomic structure is already there. Trying to break it by emphasising the less mentioned side (woman in this case) only results in consolidating the structure. It is this emphasis on the linguistic difference that forms the unequally binary gender identities, not the figure flâneur per se. So since it’s you who have raised up this issue, it’s you who seems to be so cautious about words and ideology behinds them, take some responsibility of the visual presentation of your idea as well. 

Even the message is nice; the communication is not - neither the terminology nor the visuality. I’m seeking for another narrative.

[oktoeverything-blog]

w o r d

I was reading a book. All of a sudden a little thing in the past came to me. It was in the 20th Century Art History class back in my CUHK period. One day, Gloria our teaching assistant told us as a laugh that since she came to HK, she couldn't buy hair clip anymore, because every shop sells black clip, and she is a blonde. Next week in the same class, she sat at the first row of the room as usual, reading a big book about Chinese landscape painting. I walked in, sat at the back seat of hers, as usual, and handed a board of golden clips to her. I found them in a H&M shop. She turned her head to me, smiled, of course, and said, ‘so cute/adorable’ in Chinese. I smiled back. When I now recall it I thought this ‘cute/adorable’ referred to those clips, but at that time I thought she meant me. Then the class began. She was happy. I was happy too.

This little memory was sweet. I almost forgot it until just now when I was reading a book at my awesome balcony, alone, and suddenly the image of her reading books rushed into my head. I smiled when I was thinking of it. And then I thought, is it romantic? (As I’m recently working on my project about romance.) No, I self-answered, I won’t call it romantic. It would sound like I admire her in a homosexual way, which I am not. Yet the quality of this little memory and the feeling aroused by it has no difference from what I would call ‘romantic’. It’s small, surprised, and sweet. Then how do I describe it in a word? ‘Happy’ would be too general; ‘Sweet’ could be her feeling, but not accurate enough for mine; ‘The roses in her hand, the flavor in mine’, way too serious. Sometimes feelings are beyond literacy, like this one. Perhaps I’d rather tell the wordy story as it was, let the listeners have a feeling upon it themselves, than try to conclude it in few words.

Words are used to solidify things. We describe all fluent and abstract things happened around us, and try to use words to make them tangible. Many times we fail to grasp them, but we keep trying. We keep practicing. We read books and we listen to others - we aim to learn the best way to articulate the world we live in. Literature is still considered as the highest level of recording knowledge and intelligence in the academia. Socrate and Plato debated. Confucius didn’t write but utter (述而不作). But all we have now are still literatures of their great minds.

And I doubt. I’ve got passions in literacy. But sometimes I’m tired of it. I always feel sick after I having talked too much, no matter who I am talking to and how great the conversation is. I feel like vomiting. Like too many things from inner me are now out, and I feel empty. Those inner-me words are out ruining things. They try to help, but actually they ruin the yet-been-uttered things. It’s very much like how I understand photographs. They aim to memorise the treasurable moment, but they actually disrupt the real fact of it. The feelings mean to be abstract and ambiguous at the first place if you ask me, and the photograph records them too detailed to be poetic. Like I won’t be exciting if I could record my dream. And don’t mention how photograph is now over-taken, and when it details one special second, it annihilates other seconds almost completely in one’s memory.

That’s why I seek for any alternative expression. Poetry is an exception. The words in a poem are often not descriptive, which gives the poem an equally abstract quality of the object it’s poeming. Poems are images in many cases. And visuality, another option would be. I’m not good at making visual objects, yet. But I have a good sense to appreciate them. So as a better communication of the whole message I try to convey in this article, I’ll end with this painting I saw the other day in Tate Modern. It’s Magic Realism in Weimar Germany. 

It’s grand. And It’s beyond ‘grand’.

[oktoeverything-blog]

g u i l t y

Two things usually haunt me.

One is I kept hearing the embarrassing/inappropriate/arrogant/narcissist/whatever-fucked-up things that I’ve said to people I like/care/respect, like they just came up to my mind randomly in totally irrelevant time. I know they were so embarrassing, but also, I know I would say the same thing if the situation happens again.

Another thing is most of the films I’ve watched are downloaded illegally, music as well. But there are always ‘ILLEGAL’ and ‘illegal’, you know. For me this is just illegal, which I could live with. I did go to the cinema and the concert, but the thing is: first, I rarely like new films, especially those in Chinese cinema. Second, the audiences suck. Laughing kids, talking adults, people even talked on their phone when I last visited a cinema in China. And why has the popcorn ever been invented? No offence, popcorn. In the Kubrick Cinema, an art cinema in HK, audiences would not leave until the end of the closing credits - to show respects. But in Chinese cinema, few film worths my respect, first of all, and people so rushing leaving just make me awkward to remain sitting. These are not excuses. People in China treat film with no manners, like at all. So this is just ‘illegal’. Like how those who checking their phones in a cinema more moral than me? ‘There is no right life in the wrong one’, said Adorno.

So. I used to never doubt about it. But one day when I was with a professor, a film scholar, in BFI, we talked about DVDs. I said I rarely watch film on DVDs especially when my present macbook doesn’t have a player. And he said he had the same macbook with me and he just bought an external player - that’s it. I said yeah but it’s inconvenient and I could watch them simply online. Then he had a subtle reaction that was kinda saying ‘that was not professional (as a film fan)’, or ‘that was ILLEGAL’, or whatever in a negative attitude. This aroused my sense of guilty. So on that day in BFI, I bought a DVD of Pulp Fiction. (not my favourite though.) In fact I have more than twenty DVD films, but I only watched less than five of them. DVD is only for collections. Like I have several vinyls but I ain’t got any turntable.

I could stop this guilty. Go to the cinema, or buy the DVDs with a DVD player. Yet I know it would make me feel like a hypocrite. I would do this only for the sake of being ‘politically correct’, so I wouldn’t. Maybe I do like to support the film industry, but even I have a lot of money, I would rather donate them to great directors rather than never download films online. It’s just not my habit. I was just not born in a place where people are educated to pay for the film. Yes I was nurtured by lots of great films and songs but I downloaded most of them from free websites in a country where the government doesn’t really have time nor respect to deal with intellectual property. I’m not proud of it. And I know it sounds like uneducated, but maybe I’m just not ready for it.

The only big computer game I’ve LEGALLY downloaded was Minecraft. I liked it and I felt I should buy it, not as a supporter but a collector. But since I bought it, I’ve played it for less than ten times, because all my Minecraft friends played the illegal version, and we can’t connect between a legal version and an illegal one. I didn’t regret for my purchase, but this situation was miserable.

Recently. Ok another thing I should confess is my Adobe softwares are also free. So recently there was a new update of Adobe and then a non-genuine-software warning constantly showed up on my screen. It showed up five times when I finished watching a film online, illegally - obviously. I was pissed off by it. I thought if I had any guilty of using a non-genuine Adobe, it was gone because a big company just can’t treat people like that. That was rude. I even installed a software to stop this warning showing up. But then I thought, if I am a big guy in Adobe, I would probably think and do the same thing: they don’t buy our products, so why should we treat them nicely? It made sense. And I wondered.

The conclusion here, after all these bollocks above, is: I’m very close to the decision to buy Adobe sets these days. I don’t know whether I would finally buy it, and even become a DVD guy in the future. Like I said, I’m just not so sure and ready to be, let’s say, a decent person? It would be a basic manner for many people, but not for me right now.

We’ll see, as soon as I figure out whether I’m being a hypocrite or I really believe in this manner.

[oktoeverything-blog]

p e o p l e

I have the capacity to socialise with people. Like I know how to talk to people, work with people, make people around me feel comfortable, or at least not feeling too bad. I know those manners. But besides the fact that I’m not really willing to ‘deal with’ most people, as I said earlier that I’m anti-social but I’m not social-disabled while many others are, I feel confused with people’s real feelings. I’m extremely stupid at it. I'm smart at the outer world, but I’m far below the average at interpreting people’s inner thoughts.

Sometimes I thought I’m good at it, but many times I’m proved to be wrong. Like last year a professor I quite respect emailed me with an article about theatre and dance. Within the email he only wrote: I thought you might be interested in this article. This confused me, like why he thought I would be interested, as there was no clue on me relating to the field, and why he decided to share it with me, only for once, especially as he was a distant professor who didn't seem to be someone who would share article (which is irrelevant to class) to his student. Throughout the article I couldn’t find a place that has the potential to remind him of me when he was reading it. 

People to me are texts. I’m the text analyst. Usually, I use details to draw conclusions about people’s real feelings. Yet more than once I was told, you can’t believe people’s words. Those words are just words and don’t mean anything. I mean I’m not that stupid to ‘believe’ people’s words. But they are effective evidences aren’t they? They definitely are when they are in films, or novels. But in life? I gradually become not so sure. Many times I don’t know how should I interpret this and that, and how should I plan for the next plot, of my life.

Am I implicitly talking about love? Well, partly yes and partly no. Has anyone managed to fully understand the other’s feeling? I know what blue is; you know what blue is. When we see a blue box, we all say it’s a blue box. We are so sure that we are perceiving the same colour when we are using the term. Yet at the same time, logically, we know it’s impossible. We know there lies a nuance. And that nuance, is the essence of the world of people. It bridges people and it separates people.

Then it goes back to the design question: can the message been fully delivered and received? Beyond all the possibilities of getting lost in the process of encoding and decoding, can a transparent and complete communication turn up as a real miracle?

Hang on, I might have found my research question: Can feeling be branded?