there is a bit of kerouac in this post
or, shall we say, lots of kerouac in this post.
vicarious living,
deleting Instagram does not stop that from happening. it is ingrained in human nature. abstinence is not the way to go. learning how to do something is the way to go.
it is not in the what, it is in the why.
I have been living under many obligations that others made to me and those that I made to myself.
I had too many rules.
I have memorized enough to forget who I am and what the nature of art is.
there is no fucking rules. bill wurtz said that and I will say that again.
open yourself to possibilities.
chapter I. unconditionally
I have a habit of learning about artists’ private lives when I listen to their music. I have listened to many albums, but only few artists made me listened to their entire discography. there are around two to four at the moment.
the first artist is thắng (and his band ngọt that I studied his discography), a Vietnamese indie singer and songwriter. he was “my type”. regardless of his art, he remained a good dad and husband, until last year when he divorced with his wife.
in retrospect, I think I have made many dangerous assumptions while welcoming the news of his divorce. what died was not him, but the ideal of a person that I had. I felt disappointed and angered for some reasons. now that I am calmer, I realize that divorcing from a person does not make you a bad dad or a bad person in general. they are two separate things. divorce is simply a resolution that needs to happen. we are humans and we make mistakes. our suffering arises when we feel bad for making mistakes, however grand it is, something that is ingrained in our nature.
the second artist is taylor swift, who split with joe alwyn just a few weeks or months ago. my reaction to this was strange. I just observe how the fandom react to this, and I have to admit, most of it was toxic. things get even worse when the news of her date came out this week. lots of criticisms from reddit forums to newspapers that basically survive on hunting news of celebrity lives. but I have to admit, only when there is demand, there would be supply, and I am part of that demand, so I am powerless against all this. through my observance, I learn that the way we react to artists and celebrities tell us very little about who they are as a person, but who we are as ourselves. news and scandals that happen with artists are simply mirrors to reflect who we are and what our opinions are. whether it is someone should settle down, should get married, should have stayed with another person. I was less disgusted by the news but by the reaction about the news of the greater population.
the third artist is matty healy, the front man of THE 1975 and the one who taylor is dating right now. I listened to THE 1975 a few months ago when my crush back then was obsessed with their albums. before I know anything, I fell in love with about you, and I’m proceeding to learn more about their discography. before the taylor-matty deal, I only knew the band for the music they make, not their personal lives and matty’s problematic behaviors. after learning about that, I was disappointed, actually. it made me question the things that I’ve learned from those artists’ songs.
the question is, can you separate the art from the artist? can you discard an entire person for something they did in the past? should I abandon both, or should I keep listening to their music and ignore their private lives? I tried the first one, I and my disciplined lasted for a few hours. the second choice, I haven’t tried, but I think that wouldn’t age well, because that alone would cause me so much fear. the greatest fear comes from not knowing.
that moment, when I came back and realize that I can’t live without them, and I’m not giving up on them nonetheless, I realized I have learned to love unconditionally.
Some people are good at being in love. Some people are good at love. Two very different things, I think. Being in love is the romantic part—sex all the time, midday naps in the sheets, the jokes, the laughs, the fun, long conversations with no pauses, overwhelming separation anxiety … Just the best sides of both people, you know? But love begins when the excitement of being in love starts to fade: the stress of life sets in, the butterflies disappear, the sex becomes a chore, the tears, the sadness, the arguments, the cattiness … The worst parts of both people. But if you still want that person by your side through all of those things … that’s when you know—that’s when you know you’re good at love (Nick Miller.)
to sum up, I think what made I love those artists is how they are so unapologetically themselves. it is about being honest and vulnerable about the bad parts of yourself that really makes a person interesting and worthy of love.
there is no happily ever after. I’m fine with that. the ship is coming and I’m on board.
chapter II. freedom is ismless
does believing in one thing prevent you from believing in other things? and how will you deal with that when both things are true. philosophy is about the way, and to go one way, is sometimes not to go the other way. this is unsustainable in terms of change. every school of philosophy born is a reflection of the time that we have been through. it was born because we needed it that time. we will need different things at different time. there are constants, but that constant will be expressed differently every time.
speaking on a molecular level, our body is built to change.
zwitterion is a molecule or ion having separate positively and negatively charged groups. they can change depending on the pH they are in. they can get more in, or they can let go. we are honestly the same. we are born to adapt to the change thrown at us in life. zwitterion doesn’t stand there and think it’s too bad that we are too acidic or alkaline, they just bring us back to normal, and I think that is what we should do as well. complain less about the situations that we are in and take actions. don’t like it? change it.
you will realize that change is never good or bad, change is change. that is as much as water is not an acid or a base or an alcohol, water is water, because it contains both groups.
a good philosophy, for me, favors change and is open to change. freedom itself does not end with ism. it is open to all directions.
chapter III. that one subunit called homo sapiens
the reason behind excessive molecular chemistry reference in this post is 1. I have just finished my May 2023 IB exams, and some of the knowledge is not really leaving (I mean honestly some of the lines from my Vietnamese works still run in the back of my head out of context) and 2. I believe that when you understand someone on a molecular, even quantum level, it allow you to understand the greater polymer that is built from it. that is, human and the society we built.
I’m applying both approaches to understand humans, that is, both from learning about culture from learning about the history of the quarks, atoms, molecules, and cells that brought them here. and sometimes, the best way to learn is to see and treat them as who they are, rather than their greater or smaller parts.
all the guys I loved left, but their taste of music stayed with me. and I’ve learned so much listening to those bands’ songs. in retrospect, they didn’t leave me with nothing. whether you earned something is a matter of perspective, and for me, now, they brought me invaluable gifts that changed my life in unthinkable ways.
chapter IV. but how do I do art
there is no rules
just keep doing it
all the years are not wasted
all is not lost
aside thắng, taylor swift, and matty healy, authors that really brought about paradigm shifts in me are haruki murakami and higashino keigo. the deal about japanese novelists is that they have a normal job, and they write in their own time, and when they make enough money for a living writing, they just make the transition.
it is wrong to think that they write despite their day job, actually. it is thanks to their job and what they learned in college (theater for murakami and electrical engineering for keigo), that they are able to write such page turners. all the years before officially doing art is not wasted, it is during that germination period that is so crucial to the development of the full bloom. all is not lost, create something today even if it sucks.
there are different types of people that do art.
there are people that don’t go to college at all and just go for it¹, those that do it later and grow it as they get into the real world².
there are people that write drunk, edit sober³, and there are people that write drunk, never edit⁴.
there are people that write for the rest of humanity, there are people that write about successes and failure, there are people that write just to finish, so they don’t write for anyone⁵.
as I’ve written in a letter to myself a year ago, there are questions that I will know answers in one year’s time (as I do now), and there are questions that I will have to spend my entire life answering, that is, who I am and what I should do with my own life.
the answer will change and I’m okay with it.
I would probably come back to this post in 10 years feeling cringe, but I don’t care.
I will embrace it.
¹ Thắng, Taylor Swift, THE 1975
² Haruki Murakami, Higashino Keigo
³ Hemingway
⁴ Kerouac
⁵ lyrics translation in Thắng's song Viết nhạc cưa em (Write music just to flirt with you)
Comentarios