confused.
“It was a good talk. You really looked confused!”
A curator who worked as coordinator for Yokohama Triennial 2005 told me after my talk there. I was a collaborator of and part of Ong Keng Sen’s project consisting of installations incorporating my works and talks, School of Politics, presenting my first draft for Sobron Sehari-hari. I really looked confused because I was really confused.
I remember Vivian was shooting and I asked for the footage. There were so many questions, so many good questions, so many bad questions I couldn’t answer. Perhaps I will never be able to answer anything at all. Perhaps Sobron Sehari-hari is merely a collection of coincidences. But isn’t life a collection of coincidences? Does everything have to have a particular reason? Having asked that, don’t all coincidences happen for a reason? Don’t they say that everyone actually decides to be born?
Shoot me now. I am confused. Being confident, intelligent, and knowing what you want, is at times boring. Unpredictability is stale. Shoot me now and let me be part of the ever-expanding cosmic confusion. Isn’t the world gonna end in 2012 anyway? Why are we here now pretending to know all?
Imagine what happened in those Japanese audience’s mind when they walked out the screening room. We were living on the same blue planet, but we were a universe apart.
It was a good talk – I really looked confused. And I guess I made them confused as well. What a brilliant talk for the School of Politics.
Life is a series of coincidences? People want to be born? That is romantic but…
The universe is chaos and in chaos all things are possible (even people).
The human mind is a pattern recognition system.
Together these facts make us ‘recognise’ life as a series of coincidences. We say life has ‘meaning’. We describe our lives as a story (a meaningful pattern – a reflection of the nature of our brains). But that is just a natural way to connect our neurones.
Life is like surfing. Waves are ‘inspired’ by a storm thousands of miles away, wind on the surface of the oceans and the movement of the moon around our planet. The wave does not care whether you are there or not. It will just as happily drown you as take you for an exhilarating ride. And that makes it all the more beautiful.
Surrender to the chaos. Find peace in the meaningless and indifference of the universe. It is far more beautiful than anything man could conceive (with the possible exception of ourselves).
Also: All life ‘wants’ to be born, to live, to postpone the inevitable. From the amoeba to the whale. But will and destiny are an illusion and like the desire for life come with the DNA rather than a preconception conception (ha!). Somehow I also find this more comforting and beautiful than an after-life or reincarnation which are merely reflections of our own egos.
Just be happy – compassion is the path – all else is ego.
But don’t listen to me – I just an egotistical hypocrit!
Yeah. The latest thing I heard is that souls reincarnate in groups – that the people we meet during our lives are actually the same group of souls that travel from life to life. That we always actually meet the same souls that we met during our past and future lives. These souls would take different roles, though, like one who used to be your wife in this life might be your husband on your next, etc.
It is nice to be able to believe so – just try it out yourself – you would think you are getting a grip and life is not that unpredictable anymore, even though you still don’t know what’s going to happen the next second.
However you’re right that those fungus patches on my wall are not meant to look like human faces. That the man on the moon doesn’t exist. That those wooden barks were never designed to look like cats and dogs. That those rocks never thought of themselves as the twelve apostles.
In times like these something usually happens with the chemicals in my brain. Somehow I would feel that I’m dispersing, and eventually dissappears. That my skin, flesh, bones, are all in my head. That you and everyone else are also only in my head. Or somewhere close to my heart. Just a bit above my abdomen perhaps.
Between clutching your grip and dissolving into thin air, somewhere between these two states, that’s where we really live. That’s a big wide continuum, and happiness is too.