Quelle est la couleur de la peur?
What is the color of fear?
Quelle est la couleur de la tristesse ?
What is the color of sadness?
Quelle est la couleur de la haine?
What is the color of hatred?
Et quelle est la couleur de l’amour ?
And what is the color of love?
There seems to be a rule: if you cannot beat someone physically, at least beat them verbally. Looking at the reportage on Olympics from U.S. and French newspapers, this is very much the case. Air pollution, athelete’s state-regulated training, drug abusage and the impact of the game on ordinary citizens, are just some of the negative cases mis au centre. It’s almost dismaying to see that news report seems to be never able to reach unbiaseness. Instead, news reporters, who exert great influence on public opinions, are like blind men feeling the elephant, as in the Asian fable, could only perceive what they want to see.
In a novel called Bad Girl, Mario Vargas Llosa, a Peruvian writer, made one of his characters spoke his mind: that he wishes one day he could write with complete objectivity, without self-pity.
I wish too.
Sometimes I don’t understand why this world is so discriminating. I used to be an arrogant discriminator myself. But when I dropped that prejudice, looking around, I saw many people around me are still holding on to it. Some people, actually a lot of people, never bother to talk to someone not on par with them.
It is not difficult to find something to discriminate, everything part of identity, race, nationality, age, knowledge, gender, taste & career could be an object of injustice. But what exactly does the discrimator get out of this cruel exercise? Is it a kind of self-assertation, self-assurance and self-protection that draw the border between their own identity and status and that of others? Is it true that if someone need to hold on to the things they love that they must hold and sacrifice the opposites? Why would obsession, sometimes self-indulgence, become a destration weapon? How could someone else’s bad taste infinge on one’s good taste, and how could someone else’s inferiority infringe on one’s superiority? Sometimes I feel there must be some fear leading to discrimation, the fear like that of someone senior and respectable daring not looking at his young and green subordinate as if this subordinate represent his own untellable youth.
Today had been a fire-fighting day. Module mapping, event reporting and tomorrow’s language exam comming up.
Fingers crossed.
Today I was reading a book in a public library, and a name card slipped out. Its owner works or used to work at the business unit of a bank in Korea. Is he a transient traveller? What prompted him to leave a name card in library book? I’ve seen people leave notes on publicity postcards and house for rents. The last note I saw read something like masteroom 3+1 with a phone number. This is namecard of a stranger. Am I going to keep it in my holder?
From http://www.pyoart.com/artist/yueminjun/html/diologue.asp
A dialogue about Yue Min Jun’s art
In 1989, a number of artists had started creating works about this sense of loss, which inspired me in some way. I began to work on images of people that simultaneously aroused feelings of strength and self- mockery, which fit with my mood then and helped to relieve the unhappiness in my heart. Before I produced these people, I felt my art lacked power.
Art should be an expression of one’s particular feelings and should be direct and deep. So I drew one person, and then added another and another until there were crowds of them.
Then I felt my emotions to be fully expressed.
The other day I went to Singapore Art Museum (because you can enter for free by producing matric cards), I found on the guest book a list of my fellow schoolmates. To my surprise, they’re all from engin, either second or third years. And there’s even two freshmen with no matric card asking for entry with their school admission letter.
It puzzled me why engin students had such an enthusiasm for art, and have led me to the following hypotheses.
Hypothesis 1:
Engineers have always had an unexpressed liking for art.
Hypothesis 2:
Engineers do not prioritize art in their pyramids of needs. While arts students probably have visited the museums during its non-free days, engin students must wait until it’s free to visit.
Hypothesis 3:
Engin students and arts students both have visited the art museum during its non-free days, but after it became free, arts students ceased to visit it, thus their names not shown on the guest book.
The most breathtaking race is the one that you don’t know you’re in.
Had you known it earlier, you would have run it a different way.
Each artist has his signature written into the works. Recently I’ve seen a collection of Botero, and his attributes is nothing but FAT, for every object or character, from Mona Lisa to banana.
But by all means, I like many of the works such as A stroll by the lake and Bishop. He insisted that his works are completely Colombian.
