Tag: preservation

099a – reflective

Haven’t written for over a week. It’s been a decent one, for the most parts. Delhi summers is quite exhausting, however. Not sure how I feel about the coming two months. Realised today that my house lease ends sooner than I thought so that’s something I need to process, and then I also need to take some time out to decide whether or not I want to look for work anytime soon. I don’t know if I can handle (or cope with) two big rocks on my head. 

Going to hang with friends tonight, looking forward to it, been a while. Have some friends visiting next week and also have a weekend trip planned towards the end of the month. Looking forward to both these things. 

Relationship stuff has been pretty smooth so far, quite happy and grateful about that, don’t want to take that lightly. 

My back has been aching for the whole week now— not sure I slept weird or whether it’s the age that’s starting to show up (haha). (Feel stupid to even laugh at this because part of me doesn’t want to make age-based jokes and part of me is genuinely worried whether age-based issues are going to start bothering me at this very (in many ways) young age. 

I think I’m going to take out some time over the weekend and set some intentions for May! Feeling kind of excited about it so I’d love to make use of the energy.

Stopped writing this last night because I didn’t have a lot of time, but back at it today morning. Had a great night, unexpectedly fulfilling actually. 

Woke up feeling a bit reflective today morning for some reason, and it made me realise that these days I feel like I have more memories already in my head (or my body or my heart, whatever) that I feel like I don’t have the space to go out and make new ones. I was talking to my sister on the phone the other day and she was sharing some memories of us from back when I was 2 or 3 (I had asked her if she remembers anything) and really, it was quite overwhelming (in a good way though). [Sidebar: I’m trying to find a word for this—ie overwhelming but in a good way but I can’t.] 

The general theme from yesterday seems to be documentation and preservation. Even with the folks I hung out with, we were actually exchanging a lot of stories from our pasts. 

This week I also complete a year to having moved from Amsterdam to Delhi. I hope I can find some time to reflect upon it all. 

Of course, documentation ties this post up nicely too. Happy to be doing this, happy to be making notes. Happy to preserve and document and reflect on here so I can continue to make more memories, ie live more and live as much as I can. 

Happy May, folks! xx 

047b – sadness is freeing

There is a question that various artists and creators have addressed over the decades: Is sadness, pain necessary to create art? [1]

Everyone has their own answers, and I’m not going to attempt to share a version of my answer to this today. But I do want to share another observation, somewhat related. I do find that there is a certain freedom in sadness that I don’t feel in happiness. With happiness, I find myself getting attached, wanting to hold on to it longer, wanting to preserve, and overall just very afraid to mess something up. With sadness, or other “negative” emotions, on the other hand, I feel extremely free. There is no pressure to be a certain way, “you’re already sad”, things can’t really get worse, and I feel like that opens up ideas, the page, the canvas, everything. 

So while pain may not be “necessary” to create art, I do think it lends better to most art than positive emotions do. But of course, this may differ for people. 

One part of this could be my particular relation with positive emotions. Why is it that positive emotions demand more attention and preservation from me? I guess it’s insecurity at some level. Maybe I’m more confident in giving up control when it comes to negative emotions (because I learnt that I needed to, and there wasn’t another way), and in that way I’ve actually learnt to process them even better than positive emotions. I need to let positive emotions also take their own course. I need to accept that those, too, cannot last. 

The other part though is the “sharing” of art, and not just its creation. Firstly, I do believe that more sharing leads to more creation, and that is the primary reason why sharing is important. But even with sharing, it’s easier to share stuff related to negative emotions (for me), because even though happiness gets more rewarded on social media, I’m almost worried about conveying that I’m happy and sorted. Because if I convey that once, I worry that people are not going to be around when I’m sad again. But maybe that’s related to same thought around permanence. Maybe because I want happiness to be somewhat permanent, I think that other people look at it the same way as well. Maybe I feel the world has an idea of permanence around happiness as well. 

Okay, to summarise: I feel more freedom around negative emotions as compared to positive emotions. I think negative emotions are not necessary but do lend better to the creation as well as sharing of art. I worry that the world also has the same ideas as me when it comes to relating happiness or positive emotions with a certain amount of permanence. 

[1] Ocean Vuong talks about this in “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous”