Orpheus in the Underworld

In the right occasions, Beethoven’s sonatas change to feathers, sucked into me through my ear canals, tickling a part of my brain, teasing it, titilating it, licking it, and fading away without a fair explanation. I cannot turn it off in such scenarios, because the music dictates to me to go on. 

My skin has a tingling sensation in response to the guests. I kind of hope the guests would leave, because I have work to do, but it is not up to me. The notes dwell on me, like parasites, with a quick analysis of my nutritional status, they get to decide how long they will live upon me. I sit there, waiting for the results, and somehow enjoying the uneasiness. 

I admit that it is my fault to let the music in, because I executed my free will to search for it, click on it, and plugged my airpods into my ears. I take full responsibility for this attack, in fact, I should say, I am a part of the attackers. Should my volition be stronger, I would’ve sent Miles Davis into my brain chamber. He tinkers with his trumpet like an acrobat, and his friends mess around with percussion. Their music is always harmless. 

My weakness facilitated this event. The feminine part that I decided to forget finds its home, and accuses me of misogyny. I didn’t explain, because I know I am guilty. I recall the woman in my body, she has a lot of grievances, and asks me where she can officially file those complaints. 

I direct her to the exit of my mind, because I am an escapist and never wish to confront disappointment. When I look at the glasses in front of me, I don’t want to see myself. I want to see through the glass as if I were impalpable. I want to see the leaves with multiple shades of green. I want to see the bees piercing into the flowers and flying against the wind. I want to sail, and get lost in the middle of a tempest, be drawn into the bottom and see orpheus looking at the sun. I need to tell him , don’t look back, she is right behind. I want to be the eyes of all whose eyes are looking at my direction, and I, too, will not look back, because they will tell me, whatever you hope to follow you is right behind. Whatever you do not wish for is not there. 

If ever, hard work finally permits me to be robotic, I will be able to click on the piano keys the same way as I click on the laptop ones. But now, it is reversed. My computer keyboard evinces its musical quality, and as composing on a piano, I am composing on a machine. A naive, nihilistic, monstrous, dirty, disgusting, despicable device. It uses me as a function, it inputs Beethoven, and I spit out texts. It stores them, quietly burning its electricity. I know, after all, all those who care about anything at all, do not survive death. 

Sailors

Sometimes I am not sure what I am training myself for. Why did I come for a master’s program? To learn to be a good writer. Am I a better writer? No, I am a much worse writer. What is it that I am learning? I am learning an authoritative structure, a hierarchy, a methodology. I am learning an artificial system that organizes the world to a tidier comportment. 

What is the point of organizing? In times of frustration, I often think about it. I used to hate it to the point that I would scatter my things back after cleaning my room. What about now? I am not sure. Although the first step before debunking anything is to understand it, I am not sure if I am still up to debunking it, seeing how intertwined I am with that structure. Sometimes I am even attracted to it, willfully diving into its comfort, enjoying the dream that is collectively woven by generations of smart people. 

And I am bearing the consequences of my behavior all the time. I read more literature review than literature, and I smirkingly indulge in oversimplifying everything I have the pleasure of observing. Feeling smart is alluring, because it argues against my obvious dumbness, and legitimizes my existence. 

The “-ism”s are like lighthouses, pulling strayed navigators closer, and hinting at something absolute, eternal, and certain. The more desperate a sailor is, the eager they are towards the point of the light. I am that sailor, angered by my lack of talent, driving full speed to the end of my ability to write anything at all. 

This is my confession.

“The Right Level of Oppression”

I was watching a snippet of Žižek’s comment on cinema today for a sheer lack of passion in reading anything serious. He caught me with these words, “the right level of oppressions.” In this snippet, he spoke about something I ponder all the time about great art. 

He calls this a “tragic insight,” which is that artists are the most profound when they are in oppressive conditions. When Kieślowski gets out of a dictatorship regime and finally gets to film “half-naked beautiful actresses,” he stops making good films. 

I think the word tragic insight is accurate in describing this unfortunate truth. Coming to Europe made me realize how little do I empathize with West European art, especially the contemporary ones, which celebrate the freedom of everything. Without constraints, art expresses a sensation of boredom. This is especially true with art that describes forms and elevates form to their content. But at the same time, I definitely acknowledge and appreciate the value of a good society, and how it make people much less miserable.

Art is supposed to arouse something that cannot be evoked by other stimuli. Language is my favorate form of expression, but it has strong limitations. Language evokes sensation through meaning, and if meaning is not acquired, the designed sensation is stymied. Although it can evoke alternative ones based on misunderstanding, there usually exists some form of cannonized understanding based on the relatively rigid rules of grammar and syntax. But it is not the case for other art forms. Though paintings, photography, and cinema all have some formalized dyads of sign and meaning, they are not codified. It means that the sensation they are capable of arousing is unlimited. When a piece of art arouses boredom, I don’t think it is considered great. Though I would say it has entertaining effects and should definitely exist for that reason.

A soul that has been cultivated by hardship is able to embed complex stimuli in their artpieces. Though imagination is oftentimes put on the pedestal nowadays, pure imagination has more entertaining power than enlightening ones. Erudition is often another contribution to art that complement imagination, but it doesn’t change the nature of the art fundamentally. 

If it is possible to choose, I guess most people, if they are sane at all, would choose to sacrifice the possibility of creating great art for a better human condition. But human condition is miserable enough with mortality, let alone those who are even thankful for mortality for permitting them to stop suffering at some point. In this circumstance, I agree with Žižek. Unfortunately, great art comes from oppression at the right level. 

United by Gopnik

One song by the Eurovision contestant Tommy Cash saved my unfortunate squandering of 2 hours on that program. A Chinese understands the post-soviet cynicism combined with the emergence of consumerist frenzy more than anybody else. Well, the population from the former USSR probably also has that reminiscence, but who beats those who still live under that condition and see no possibility of an alternative chance?

Mass production and grand narrative are the combination that everyone wishes they could avoid, but some people unfortunately cannot, and the artistic consequence of that is irony, and irony only. Obscenity, violence, jokes, and indecencies are all ironic. Pretty butterflies and serene sunshine are never ironic. People from such conditions don’t deserve inherited metaphors. They must create new ones. 

Jokes of course are destructive. The art of jokes is that it is never for sure to be destructive. They evoke two interpretative possibilities, or more, and audience form alliances according to their interpretations of one joke. This is almost as accurate as separating them by political opinions. 

The ultimate symbolic joke is Gopnik. Three strips. Slavic squats. Who’s to say that is a parody for the Russians? Absurdity doesn’t belong to any one nation. It aims at every collection of individuals that hopes to upgrade something by destroying it. 

United by music – is it possible? Sure, when we are replaced by machines, which subscribe unanimously to a set of good music by the law of the holy algorithms. 

赛马

中国人喜欢天才，喜欢将个人成功归结于偶然的，基因性的突变，或是天时地利人和导致的异状。芸芸众生是正常情况，而做出一些成绩的人往往在人们眼中是高不可攀的超人。

这在中英互联网的论坛中就可以看出。有时，我会搜索一些学者在中文网站的材料，来看看学者的中文名字，以及自己是否以前就通过翻译作品了解过此人。通常，中文语境中的这些学者或知名人物，在人们口中，在百科全书中，都被写成奇人：天才中的天才，神童，非凡。仲永才是大家膜拜的对象，这似乎是一种对神的追求，而因为没有公认的神，因此大家在人中狩猎神的影子。

这样一来，一旦某人被贴上了超人类的标签，ta就很容易借力真的成为超人。当然，这在每个文化中都多少有所显现，但中国人对神人的推举还是更为明显。既然神人已现，那众生的能力就体现在是否能辨别出神人，为了证明自己的识人功夫，众人又更乐意将自己选中的神人吹捧得更高一等。这倒和赛马有异曲同工之趣。

自然，人天赋有别，总有人在某一处做得特别好，这是正常情况。而一旦将这归功于天才，天选，那就将众生和天才中间隔了一堵墙，这也方便地成为划分群体的方法。有的人天生不同，所以他们能做某事。这对于激发一种长久的、非激情所推动的、寻常的创造力有阻碍的作用。成绩总归不是靠一时兴起能做成的，压抑中的爆发不是长久的创造之力。每个人都应当有一种自知，即自己有某种天赋，而自己的努力，前半生是将它发现出来，后半生是使用它，驾驭它，完成自己被赋予的工作。

也有很多情况是，某人的天赋与ta希望从事的事业有别。这样的情况下，此人也许在自己愿做的领域无法达到擅长领域那样的成绩，但长远来看，不论是成就还是个人幸福，都远大于短期让其做擅长但不热爱的事来得好。不仅好，而且善，这是对人的仁慈。

Transferability

A good thing of studying at the university is that you enter into a universe of terminologies and structures, which are transferable from discipline to discipline, and gradually you can take advantage of the existing materials in your brain and get into unknown fields with less pain. 

Studying outside of this structure is certainly doable, but then all your knowledge structures would be based on personal expressions, then it would be harder to transfer the skills and knowledge. But transferability is always naturally ongoing, and that is why a lot of very old wise people would tell you a story of them doing something completely random when they were young and they’d use that wisdom for every other aspects of their lives. 

I definitely find it a lot easier to do inter-disciplinary study at the university than in workplace, in the street or in socializing. Because outside of the institution, all wisdoms and knowledge are expressed in their own ways, so the merging process can only happen in brain in a more abstract manner. Sometimes you know that you are employing your skills from another field to benefit your action in another, but you cannot make it clear what that is exactly.

The thing that is the most transferable in my humble opinion is music, and I learned more from it about stuff I study in academia than anything else. Any music, rock, classic, popular, rap, techno. It teaches me patterns, and the responsibility of academics is to find patterns, or assume patterns and prove them right or wrong. Music teaches me both science and humanities. It also teaches me to acknowledge my humbleness and at the same time take advantage of my limited cognitive ability. 

Academia is a process of baptizing phenomenons and giving them names. Names are keys to dictionaries: they evoke something much larger than a simple word, so that you store and converse in a more concise manner. After baptizing, they are dictated into existence, they are cognitively created, and now they have a nature, which is the nature of how we understand it. 

This is a process of mapping the world with language. Once that happens, you can play around with the language and make magical things happen. 

信息锅的光荣佩戴者

每当学习的时候，如果耳机里没有传来中文的音乐，我会觉得自己好像已经经历完了我被配给的所有轮回，在最终的审判过后，被扔进了外国的虚无。

所有不是我的语言所讲述的东西，都停止了打动我的能力。它们曾蛰伏在我的机体之内，等待着一个征服我的机会，盼望着一种文化的交流能把我升华为一位骄傲的世界公民。然而，在我一头撞进这文化的沧海中，它们窒息着我的松果腺，把我的活力淹没，给我贴上了文化交流者的标签，把我原本合身的外套取下。

有时我会因为这种痛苦而哭泣，但是这样的宣泄好像又与我个人无关。远方的家人在衰老，对这件事我无能为力。我生活在一个温柔的小窝里，身体的舒适让我感到前所未有的痛苦。连这舒适都是一种外国的舒适。这样的悲伤像是掉进了深井，你知道井里也有井里的活法，甚至，那井是多么的安全！它那么深，把风雨遮挡在外。可我知道，井是不对的。

我训练着自己用正规的文法写作，我明白，那是一种与机器学习相同的算法。只有那样，这种苦行才有着继续的能力，靠着理性的伟大动力，向前，向前。我自愿在头顶戴上信息锅，吸取那富有魅力的宇宙信号。它们将我装饰得前所未有地高尚，并剥夺了我做一个人的权利。

Simple vs Complex Questions

I am often amazed at how the simple questions of a subject are far more difficult to answer than the complex ones. By simpler ones I mean the ones that a layman would ask to a professional. This is true for most of the disciplines in which I’ve worked, and true for most of the areas in which I have interest. 

The only way to proceed when one cannot answer the simple questions is to dive in and manage to conquer the detailed and concrete ones. For literature, when one cannot understand the meaning of stories or the aesthetics of language, they go ahead and read them, analysing the rhythmic patterns, the symbolic purposes and story structures. From here one can more confidently look back to the initial questions and try again to answer them. If it still doesn’t work, one then has to keep digging in and come back after a while in the same manner. 

Mathematics too. It is very hard to answer questions such as why it is legit to put numerical problems in geometrical forms, what is the difference between 0 and 1, or why prime numbers behave like this. But what we can do is to manipulate our mathematical tools and play the numbers or the shapes around. We can even use the solutions of these questions for practical applications. The juniors try to answer the complex questions, with ornate details and meticulous calculations. The seniors can sit down and think about the simpler ones, and wait for the time to come when they have an inspiration to approach them. 

From this perspective mathematics sound a lot like what the epic poets do: summoning the muse in order to approach the unapproachable, and give credits to some existance larger than themselves that mobilizes the poets’ hands to embody a field of knowledge. 

That is also why I find sufficient reasons to toil when I don’t have a clue for what is going on in the big picture. I used to analyse pedantically every words with their etymology, phonetics and so on. That was something that I could do. The bigger and simpler questions can then be approached when one grasps the shape and mechanisms of building blocks and see exactly how a microcosm works. 

When even the details cannot be understood, most pedagogy would train kids with rote memories and skills, and that is also the only thing left that can be done. All in all, that which is within one’s capability is worth doing. And it is worth putting time and effort no matter how trivial that seems to be. 

The Cultivation of Intuition

All experts in a subject needs an intuition to be extrordinary, instead of being just skilled technicians. This discussion has some more relevance today as artificial intelligence is threatening to invade the cognitive arena. It’s certainly true that a collation of information is powerful, but I doubt that intuition is possible for machines. 

Mathematics is something about which I find intuition to be fundamentally important. Without intuition, mathematics is the work of a drudge, something that is achieveable with automatic force. I don’t mean the boring part of the work is not important, on the contrary, the heavy-lifting labour is what separates a mathematician from a math amateur, but intuition is what separates a math genius from a math practitioner. 

Humanities study needs intuition as well, which sounds like common sense. But intuition here needs more careful handling, because it can be abused due to its high accessibility. Take literature for example, the essence of poetic work is to influence people by creating emotional fluctuation, which can lead to an excess of intuition for readers and researchers. The job of a professional is to differentiate intuitions and discard most of them. Of course, for mathematics and science, this is also true, but as humanities seem to have a low threshold to let intuition happen, professionals in this field ought to be more careful in choosing the correct intuition to wield. 

Or I should more accurately state it as: what matters is the good intuitions. Crudely speaking, bad ones are either true or false, and the true but bad ones are trivial, which wastes our precious time that can be spent with better stuff like idling.   

Musical Tyrant

If a piece of music is composed with an emotional scheme, then the playing should be more strictly controlled. For this kind of music, I prefer the ones with passion to the ones with sorrow, which has something to do with my personality. In any case, I like expressions that are honest and controlled. If it is not controllable, then it is embarrasing to express it out loud with forms like music or poetry. I do get emotional with language sometimes, but I try not to read or use them afterwards. I might do it as a chore to clean up my cognitive space. They are more functional than aesthetic. 

Language surely can be a downpour of emotions, but that is bad taste. The Romantists advocate it, but they themselves are decently controlled with their own works. They are trained to a point where their utmost uncontrolled state is still controlled to a high standard. 

I enjoy listening to music composed with a strong musical regularity, though I also listen to wild compositions, but they have to be played by someone tethered by a rope. Their task is to realize something that has a tendency to chaos, but they regulate it with their enshrined force of restraint. 

You cannot simply go wild with art. That is just insanity. Poetry recently has a fashion to go haywire, which is very unfortunate. 

I don’t even think that is a high-brow aesthetic standard, as some might argue. If you go have a lunch in a humble household, you will almost certainly hear the most down-to-earth conversations and eat with the most honest utensils, which have their solemn beauty. On the contrary, I  find a lot of art created for the wealthier class going towards flamboyance or hollow, or both. 

But when art is created for a much higher purpose, for example, theology, then the hubris is oftentimes much reduced. Although it can be still be played with an individualistic manner and fail the intention of the composer.

Unfortunate event alone is not tragedy. Tragedy is the understanding that tragic events are exactly the same ones that consists of what people might call hope. If tragedy is eliminated, then hope goes away too. The deep sadness exists not in melancholy phrases, but everywhere else. It nurtures hearts, makes people laugh and dance. It is the crucial nutrition. 

There is tragedy in vivacity. But there isn’t tragedy in grandiloquence and sentimentality. If any, there hides a lesser form of comedy, something like a farce, forcing you to laugh, like a tyrant.