i realized maybe art isn't for me. i know i made that silly little ghost video
last year but it was just to make the prof feel bad. make everyone realize academia is still inacessible to many. maybe not everyone thinks the way you do. maybe i get anxious about unmuting myself. maybe i hate writing reading responses. i also made a video about some fucking weird dreams
i had. i thought it was pretty good at the time, but did it really mean anything? it's just more bullshit. it's all made up, and i think maybe i should just die.
[r1-002]
i was confused: how can a person go missing in the present day? there’s so many ways of tracking people, and to completely wipe out traces of a person’s existence seems impossible. how can you disappear? and if you wanted to, how would you even go about it?
1. creating personal work makes it hard to differentiate between what is considered work/art, and what is the artist themselves. writing or making things about personal stories and experiences lets others see you. when i present my work for critique, i am essentially also presenting myself up for critique. is this story enough to move you? have i succeeded in making you sad? please don’t invalidate my experiences by telling me this is a bad piece of art/work. this (myself) is all i can offer you.
2. what makes someone an artist? if not the celebrity artist surrounded by glamour and defined by excess, is it the tortured, suicidal long-suffering studio apartment artist? is it when the museums and galleries accept you? is it when your instructors say you’ve graduated? the status of artist shifts and seems impossible for me to grasp. i don’t think this label (or any, for that matter) suits me. the “artist” is an attainable as achieving divinity.
3. if my work and i are equivalent, and if “artist” and “god” are both impossible ideals, then the next step in the thought process was this: how can i make art (as a non-artist)? how can i become art? how can i become god?
very strange that this is precisely the same feeling as hs. did i do smth wrong to get back here, or have i done smth right this time?
throughout my life, the thing i’ve lacked—and desired the most—was ultimate control. i wanted autonomy, culpability for my actions, responsibility, superiority. everything that marked, to me, power. as a kid, i had a bit of a superiority complex: i knew i thought and behaved differently from my peers, and i thought myself objectively better than them. i was more quiet, mature; i could think critically and write more eloquently. i was seven years old. i went to church-school on tuesday 7PMs and stood in line, stony-faced. as my dad left the gymnasium, he whispered to me: “is the reason why you don’t talk to anyone because you think you’re better than everyone here?”
i said no. but i didn’t want to be there, so maybe i should’ve been honest. Yeah, i hate it here. take me home. everyone here doesn’t take anything seriously. if i wanted to learn about God i’d read the bible. i hate it. i’m like, the only chinese kid here. what a pain.
series of coincidences followed me through adolescence. maybe some of them was because i lived in the suburbs, and although there were upwards of 20 schools in the area, most of them ended up going to the same few high schools. maybe it was because i willed them to happen, or maybe i just thought too much of them. perhaps others in my position would not have noticed.
meeting you seemed destined from the start. my first friend in canada (as a toddler) introduced me to a second friend. when those two moved away, some cities over, a mutual friend became closer to me until we both had to change elementary schools. she went somewhere else and met you, and i went futher west and met [her]. she emailed me often about you, and i thought nothing of it. we went to high school, and [she] met you, talking to me incessantly about you and the girl you liked, and forced you to join us in english class, art class, table tennis tryouts. and then we became friends, and then we weren’t, and then things got kinda fucked.
was that really all meant to happed? was that the fate? the fact that i cannot seem to wrench free from this stupid cycle? am i trapped, or am i thinking too hard about this? maybe both. i really, really don’t know.
i remember writing (in the peak of my angst-filled days) that i didn’t want you to forget about me. i wanted you (both) to be plagued with guilt, never living a day without feeling like a terrible person. it seems kind of funny now, in hindsight. i’d much rather prefer you all forget me. sure, maybe once i was a doormat and a soft kid who wanted to make everybody happy at their own expense, but you killed that person. i’m dead to you. what’s left is someone else that you don’t know, and neither of you have the right to get to know me, or interact with me in any capacity.
mainly i just think that i’ve worked hard to get to where i am, both physically and mentally, and it sucks so very severely that a single notification or call can make me so angry. i guess i’m partially disappointed in myself for showing reaction, and also angry that you have the audacity to even talk to me. maybe i’m frustrated with you for not understanding the gravity of the situation. maybe i’m mad at you for insinuating things and poking at my 底线。maybe i’m upset because you brought up memories and feelings i’ve pushed so far down and away that they feel like an Actual Dream. i hate that. the feeling of being lost in a sea of uncertainties.
i don’t know. it bothers me that the thing i should have the most control over—myself, my emotions—is the thing that seems to ruin everything else. because i cannot trust you, i cannot trust myself.
