Mirages

September 1, 2024

I’ve been listening to classical music a lot recently, which has pulled me back to my roots. Piano was my earliest devotion—starting at the age of five, I would bang on the keys of our upright piano, unknowingly developing perfect pitch. I’ve done mostly solo repertoire since then, but I’m surprised that I’ve never encountered Debussy’s Images until recently.

Actually, I encountered the second piece of the series, “Hommage à Rameau,” while listening to the soundtrack for Untitled Goose Game during the pandemic. I didn’t think much of it then, except “this game automatically earns some cool points for incorporation of Debussy pieces” and “learning ‘Minstrels’ just because it’s from the game would be funny.”

But my second encounter was quite recent, while I was randomly flipping through a piano encyclopedia book. I found the first piece of the series, “Reflets dans l'eau,” and loved the contrast between its gentleness at the beginning of the piece and the buildup to the climactic part in the middle, and back again to tenderness. It reminds me of ocean waves.

Naturally, I looked into the third piece, and funnily enough, it’s called “Mouvement,” just like the name of this blog. Coincidence?

“Are you… happy?”

September 5, 2019. 5 years ago, I wrote a letter to myself a year in the future. I was the quintessential tween: boiling over with angst, worrying about public perception, and attempting to build my identity. Every year, I’d ask a variation of that question and receive some sort of cryptic answer, like “Aha, but what is happiness?” or a grounded “Nope! Well, surely next year will be better.” Even though those years were hard, I was strangely (?) optimistic in these reflections, which has expanded to being optimistic over everything across time.

But I’ve learned that I also need to be careful about being optimistic, because it sometimes lends to an unrealistic outlook on life. I liked to think that everyone acts for the benefit of others. You could say that I approached reality in a dream state.

Ironically, many people say that I write things as they are, as opposed to encoding my thoughts in beautiful metaphors. Rather than the typical live in reality and write in story, I live in story and write in reality.

Maybe it’s why I write these blog posts.

“I am.”

I was exploring some buildings on the university campus near our school recently, and as I was wandering to the library, turning over recent frustrations and small wins, I realized that I was happy. In “Reflets dans l'eau,” Debussy composed a piece about the reflections of water. The reflection is a warped perception of reality—the image is distorted across the water’s surface, the hallmark of an impressionistic painting. And while reflections can be beautiful, it simply isn’t reality.

I realized that I was looking at life through its reflections, rather than what it was. In turning over frustrations, I found that holding a grudge on a person, or trying to weakly justify why someone is acting this way wasn’t as relevant as figuring out how to move on and improve the situation, at least in the acceptance stage. I do think that having a healthy way to regulate emotions and figuring out why someone is acting a certain way are important. But in acceptance, it’s about less talking and more doing.

It’s such a beautiful day…

In Don Hertzfeldt’s film It's Such a Beautiful Day, it explores a stick figure named Bill, who experiences worsening dementia. At first, he goes through his monotonous routine, but gradually develops flashes of colorful images, which are a construction of his past. But is it his past? And is what he is experiencing real? I haven’t actually watched the film, but the idea is I do not want to have a confabulated version of a person or a situation just because I judged something too quickly.

I used to trash the university campus near our school, but I actually hadn’t seen much of it. While exploring the buildings, I couldn’t help but stop every few steps, because it was beautiful.

1/6

2/6

3/6

4/6

5/6

6/6

❮ ❯

1. The staircase, lamps, and clouds on a blue sky, contrasted with the red brick buildings. I would normally complain about the sun ray that got captured, but it perfectly intersects the two lamps, so it’s okay.
2. The layering of tower to the vining plants coating the fence, to the dry sagebrush and rock, to the blooming yellow flowers, withstanding the heat and parchedness of summer. I thought of a crepe cake, but… it would be a rather strange crepe cake.
3. More yellow flowers, plus a cactus, which I surprisingly don't see often despite living in a desert.
4. Intrigued by the seed pods, which made me think of beans. I also liked the contrast of the orange flowers against the blue sky.
5. From far away, it looked like the boy in the statue was holding the tree, and I thought that he was trying to pick fruit. But it turned out that he’s releasing a bird, but to where?
6. The two pink branches had such a nice arch shape. I liked the parallelism.

A five minute walk turned into twenty five minutes. But I would absolutely do it again with a new place.

That is all, consider subscribing or leaving a comment below!

Return to posts