Performance

"Part of Post-Modernism's appeal surely is that it allows us to display, if only to ourselves, our knowledge of prior aesthetic and cultural pluralism, our own astute awareness of ironies and paradoxes."

–– Zurmuehlen, Marilyn, 'Post-Modernist Objects: A Relation Between the Past and Present', Art Education, 45 (1992), p. 14.

This quote comes from an article that I was reading yesterday for an essay I need to write for my Antiquity After Antiquity class. I found it so great that not only did I write it down in case I need it for my essay, but I also took a photo of it and put it on my Instagram story.

I find it really good because it points out such a big part of not only post-modernism but academia as a whole, or even just generally society. It's really easy to be pretentious these days because we're in a post-modern age and the whole point of post-modernism is to question everything and uncover the layers of irony. It made me think about performative intelligence and how prevalent it is. We like to display our knowledge and sophistication.

First of all, I posted that quote about performative intelligence on Instagram. Why did I do that? Was that not to show my friends and followers that I: a) am reading about Post-Modernism; b) understand Post-Modernism; c) am sophisticated enough to criticise Post-Modernism? Granted, I also share a lot of other aspects of my life, and I know that I have this weird compulsion to share (or not conceal) where I am, which is why I continue to location mark my posts (despite Instagram removing its very amazing photo map feature a few years ago) and put location filters on a lot of my stories –– and when I post non-studying photos I genuinely care less about other people seeing the pictures than about just passively uploading my data onto the Internet, where it will likely stay forever, despite stories only being viewable for 24 hours. I don't know, it's weird. I'm just trying to say that the reasons why I posted that quote onto Instagram probably isn't because I'm an asshole who needs everyone to know how smart I am in order to cover for my crippling imposter syndrome in the IRL Oxford environment.

It's definitely something I want to consider though. Building upon my last post, I was thinking about how much of my exterior projected persona has to do with performative intelligence.

Something I really remember from high school is when Mr Smith looked over my extended essay and said that academic essays shouldn't be about displaying knowledge, but exploring and idea and doing research, in the same way that doing a lab in school about something where you already know what the results are going to be, just for the lab experience, is pretty much useless. That's the main difference between high school and university. In university, the things you do are so much less cookie-cutter certain; you never really know what's going on anymore. By the time I do my PhD, my dissertation is gonna be on something that nobody else has ever researched before, and undergrads might be reading it.

I struggle a lot with trying to be academic: coming up with original, interesting arguments that shine new light on a topic and that are unique to my own perspective. Not just reiterating what the authors of my sources are saying and not sticking to the script. To do that, I'm learning to write beyond the "introduction - point 1 - point 2 - point 3 - conclusion" structure, and learning to actually write out detailed essay plans (I used to literally just have 1-2 words per paragraph) so that I can formulate my thoughts before setting them to paper. Everything I've ever known has been to fill out the right boxes and take the tests well, reading the criteria and syllabus so I know exactly what's wanted from me.

I don't really know where this is going. I've been writing this with only half my focus. So I'm just going to publish it!

Journal entry from 2017

On the same day that I started this blog, January 1 2017, I also wrote an entry in this little Google Doc I'd started back in the summer that I only wrote a little bit into. Here it is in its entirety:

I feel suffocated by all the things I have to do: I have so many expectations for myself. Why am I not watching more films reading more books learning about more ideas constantly creating and developing..? I think my main problem is recognition, I always imagine myself becoming famous and appreciated and maybe I really need to focus on the means more than the end, on the actual process. I just feel like everything is so urgent. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/02/to-speak-is-to-blunder?mbid=social_twitter I was reading this essay by Yiyun Li in the New Yorker and she talks about reading Katherine Mansfield’s journals from when she was a teenager. I dont know how Mansfield is but I’m almost 18 and although I’m only on the cusp of adulthood I feel like my life is already over. Why did I not do things earlier, faster, better. And I don’t worry about CAS reflections or studying for mocks or…? I guess I’m thinking too long term i have FIVE MONTHS left all I have to do is survive these five months but I feel as though I might Burst I am so desperate to become something great. I started to write absurdist and satirical stories out of self-consciousness because you can’t criticise me if I don’t take myself seriously. My writing is bad and good on purpose. But when I read beautiful things I want to create beautiful things also. I have this desperate need to fill every moment of my life with something meaningful (but I watched the big bang theory for like 3 hours last night…) I don’t feel that I am doing enough there is always someone out there doing more than me doing better than me, I’m not jealous of Lorde who became a superstar at my age I’m jealous of Kelley Dong a random person on Tumblr who writes about film and seems to have things sorted out, I’m jealous of Charlotte, a Chinese-Canadian girl on Tumblr who makes films and plays the piano and makes art and has friends and followers and looks pretty in an ugly kind of way. I know, I know I’m doing a lot but i feel it’s not enough. I guess if I had 13k followers on Instagram assuming ceteris paribus I’d feel a lot more accomplished, this kind of popularity is so superficial but I still find it so important, this kind of validation from strangers, a feeling that you’re appreciated I guess… I do all this and I’m so constantly stressed by my own soul and yet I still spend hours scrolling meaninglessly on Instagram and Facebook why do I feel so disconnected from everything and lost. I never called Obrist and I never will. In ten days I find out if I got into Oxford or not but it does not really matter I just feel… I don’t know there are things that are indescribable I know I know I am still in the “early life” tab on my Wikipedia page and things will be different post-humously. I am really not good at writing in journals. I am so far away from who I want to be. 

I totally forgot that I wrote this, but I basically haven't progressed that much in the past year plus. I survived the 5 months and got into Oxford but do I feel any better about myself? Not really. I'm capital-R Realising things every day but they're really the same things, and I keep trying to improve but it's just baby steps.

I've always been in pursuit of a life that looks cool from a stranger's perspective. I'm trying to stop being so cripplingly self-conscious about what strangers think of me. But all I've ever wanted is for teenage girls, whether now or 50 years in the future, to think I'm cool. To be every girl that I've ever thought was cool.

I saw a book yesterday on Rowan Blanchard's Instagram (another girl of whom I'm jealous) called Theory of the Young-girl and I really really really want to read it. I'm hoping I'll learn something. I don't know what's in store for me in the future.

24 hours in the swiss mountains

I've been thinking lately about starting a vlog channel, mainly for posterity, so that in many years I can come back and watch this and laugh at myself and remember the good times. The problem is, I can't take myself seriously at all. Despite plans I make for making a video about outfits, a week in the life, high school senior advice, etc., I just can't imagine myself along in my room talking to a camera, and then having to listen to my own voice over and over when I edit it, and then having to release that to the world and let everyone see it... it makes me want to cringe. Still, as long as I don't take myself seriously I think it could work. I'll start slow. I'm also putting in quite minimal effort because I'm too busy to fret about whether or not my videos are perfect. 

My first video was made with the iMovie app on my iPad, which is how I plan to make all my videos since I don't want to pay for, or learn, or torrent, Final Cut Pro. Thing is, iMovie is already really inflexible, but the app is worse. For the graphics I had to use a drawing app called Paper 53. 

I hope this becomes a thing. But I probably won't be uploading another video until after first year is over. 

Some rules I'm setting myself for videos: 

- No videos longer than 10 minutes.

- Try to keep videos shorter than 5 minutes.

- No random music that fades in and out during montages. (This montage only has the natural sounds, and although it makes it a bit harder, I think it's a lot better.)

- If I do use music, it needs to be tasteful. No techno/EDM that never fits the video itself.

- No taking myself seriously

So this video was about the mountains. My friend Odelia is a visiting student in Oxford from the US, and she's been spending this holiday travelling around Europe by herself. She came to Switzerland and stayed at my house for a few days. 

On Saturday, I took her to Interlaken. There really wasn't much to see (we'd decided not to try going to the Jungfrau because of how little time we had) so we just walked around. We took the classic Swiss yellow-signed footpath all the way to Bönigen, a town that overlooks Briez, the lake to the right of Interlaken. It was calm and quiet, and there were women doing rowing training sessions on the impossibly blue water. Some people whizzed past on their bikes, and an old lady was walking her dog. We stood by the lake on a pebbled beach and tried skipping rocks – I actually managed to skip a rock for the first time in my life. We'd planned to eat in Bönigen, but the restaurant was way too expensive, so we hopped onto the Postbus and went back to Interlaken. The Korean restaurant we ate at was pretty gross, though, so we topped up our stomachs at a bakery and had slices of cake. We sat there for hours, talking about mental illness, democracy, racism, making friends. It was one of those really long and satisfying conversations, and I felt really good about it afterwards. 

We walked around a bit more, checking out a town called Matten to the south of Interlaken that looked busy on Google Maps. Turned out all the streets were residential. We strolled through the tiny village, saw a couple of really modern churches (one Evangelical/Methodist church looked like it was literally one of those big shipping containers that had been painted white, installed with a couple of windows, and adapted into a church. The other one had a normal-looking building, but it had this big white block next to it with a spike attached to the top - a bell tower? It had kept the very traditional Swiss church roof spike, but the rest of the structure was totally new and minimalistic. Both of those buildings were so fascinating to me.)  It had gotten really hot, and we were sweating. Then we returned and got on the train back. 

The train from Interlaken to Spiez contained a couple of middle aged men of that annoying, entitled variety where they will speak and joke around with you for no reason other than their own entertainment. I tried to stay good-natured, thinking, actually, about what the very extroverted and easysgoing Damon and Jo would do, which is laugh, smile, and joke with them. But they kept speaking to us in German and trying to ask questions. I said enough to humor them but they were irritating. Every time I did anything, like drink water or take out a book to tell Odelia about it, they would comment on it. They kept asking me where we were from, which I don't appreciate for various reasons, so I just said "Genf", but they didn't believe me. Thank God the trip was only 20 minutes long, so we got off for our next connection soon after. I know I'm trying to be more positive these days, but I've never really been big on having conversations with strangers. 

I did observe a stranger on the next train though (Spiez-Bern). It was a teenage girl wearing a very trendy outfit including a pair of Nike Air Max 97s, which I find disgusting (I've never understood why people will drop large amounts of money for shoes that are on trend, considering they'll be out of fashion and unwearable within the year), but you know, to each their own. She looked cool. I watched as she took another pair of shoes out of her backpack, sneakers whose color matched her sweater exactly, and started putting their laces back in. I wondered what her story was. Out of the few things she'd brought with her, why was there an extra pair of shoes? Why was she relacing them while putting them on top of her bag - was she not scared of the dirt? They didn't look new: in fact they had some brown stains on them. I concluded that she'd gone somewhere for an overnight trip (without planning an outfit change between the two days) and had spilled coffee on her shoes. She'd then put on a second pair of shoes – either newly bought or borrowed (because why would she bring an extra pair... plus they don't match her outfit as well as the original pair) and washed the dirty shoes. They'd dried and she was relacing them, but had been unable to completely get rid of the stains. 

After she was done with the sneaker, she took out her phone and went on Instagram. She went on someone's profile and repeatedly went through their story to watch the same picture over and over again. I wondered what she was thinking about. 

real eyes realise real lies

Every once in a while I have a bit of an identity crisis. I go online and see a cool friend of a friend on Instagram who now goes to Barnard and is living the life in Manhattan with nice pictures of herself and her equally cool friend group, or someone with 100k followers just for being really hot and having really amazing fashion sense, or Damon and Jo, a YouTube duo who travel all the time and speak like 5 languages and are best friends, or just the endless stream of twentysomethings giving apartment tour vlogs. I look at other people's lives and think about what I could be doing and/or what I will be doing in the future and feel a mix of excitement and fear and anxiety and shame. My current life never matches up to what I want to be doing.

A lot of that has to do with social media because things always look a lot cooler in (carefully curated photos) than they actually are. With older people writing thinkpieces about how social media is ruining everything, the younger generation tends to fight back and highlight all the good ways that social media has impacted our lives; the Internet isn't evil, it's just another step in communication, in the same way that the printing press revolutionised information. So we get tired of people preaching about the dangers of social media, but we actually do need to keep in mind that the posts people make –– especially famous people with a ton of followers who make money off of social media –– have taken hours and are meant to fit a specific persona. I read something the other day about how, inevitably, we have different facets of ourselves that we present to different people: we're different when we're with our friends compared to our parents, our colleagues, our teachers, etc. We're also different people with different friends. But on social media, all that is collapsed into one. You have to entertain everyone you know at once, and that can be really exhausting.

So I just need to keep in mind that social media isn't everything, and slowly trying to turn myself off from that –– because I do admit that I'm a bit addicted to the Internet. I no longer use Snapchat, although I keep the app for occasional messages from a couple of people. Woohoo! Thank you, new Snapchat update, for turning me off. Also, thank God I never got into Snapchat streaks, because those are completely meaningless, but obviously it feels like an achievement when you get high numbers. I only keep Facebook for magazine and school stuff, and Tumblr is also down to a minimum, especially as I only access it on the computer. I'm trying really hard to cut down on my Instagram usage, although that's now my primary social media, so forcing myself to stop using Explore. It helps that something that was really important in my final year of high school was that I finally realised that I didn't need to invest my time and energy into people that I didn't really care about, or know that well, or particularly genuinely like. I didn't hate my classmates, but I also had almost no interest in their lives –– which is perfectly okay. Especially since I'd known them for years already. Having a handful of really close friends is so much better than trying to please a bunch of people you only kind of know. So that meant that I spent less time looking at other people's stuff on social media –– my real problem is memes and random posts.

Instead of scrolling on Facebook during idle times like waiting for the bus, etc., I try to read a book –– although this is much easier said than done. It's much harder to just immerse yourself in a book for 4 minutes beacuse you really need to get back into it, whereas social media was designed to feed you little bite-sized pieces of information or entertainment and to keep you hooked.

Because that's the most important thing I've been learning: not to feel overwhelmed by guilt whenever you do something you shouldn't. Instead of feeling bad about having spent an hour on Facebook, just go and do the other thing. Wallowing is an even bigger waste of time. Being aware that everyone has these issues with the Internet and with procrastination means that I won't feel like the biggest loser in the world whenever I succumb to it, and it also makes me feel better about trying to be better. Again, social media was designed to make you addicted, so it's good to break that.

These days I like to remind myself that, although I have a ton of insecurities about every aspect of my life, and constantly berate myself for not being better and doing more, I actually have a very good exterior image. People tend to see me as someone who is really put-together and organised, and who does a lot of things. If I am never satisfied with where I am at the moment and am constantly envisioning a better alternate life for myself where, for instance, everything is the same but I'm a world-famous blogger, I'll never enjoy my life. Because even if I achieve all my dreams, I'll probably still think I could do more. I need to take things slow and realise that I actually already have a lot on my plate, and I'm only 18. I have my whole life ahead of me and I can do so many things in it.

And a final thing that I've started to come to terms with is that –– surprise –– I can literally do whatever I want. I used to, and still do, get all worked up about what I should and shouldn't be doing, for instance getting FOMO about going out clubbing, in part because I have all these expectations about what I should be doing for the "university/young person experience". But observing others, like this one 23-year-old girl in my course who is married and financially independent and covered in cool tattoos and loves cats, has made me realise that I actually can just be who I am and do whatever I like.

So I'm going to continue trying to take things one at a time and enjoy every moment, because even though I'm currently dying to go out into the real world and have my own apartment and decorate it myself, I'm sure that 10 years down the line I'll really miss my undergrad years when I was totally carefree.

bad poems #8

why do i constantly live in the future: a series of haikus

I

a small apartment,

city not too small or large,

full of books and light

II

a cat or a dog

or a rabbit or a bird

some shostakovich

III

i'll buy everything

i need, paying attention

to colanders and

IV

first aid kits, linen

and dustpan and the kettle,

a drawer for socks.

V

i don't ask for much

just time to have a pot of

yoghurt with granola

VI

breakfasts and netflix

and trips to the museum

and my phd

VII

feet up on the sofa

taking notes from my reading

fresh air from windows

VIII

cooking my mom's food

calling her to ask about

boiling lotus root

IX

mismatched furniture

wall with gallery postcards

a candle burning

X

i'll need some money

to cover the rent and to

fund my big road trip

XI

that doesn't matter

another instagram life
for my best daydreams.

things i like #9

- when wind blows across fresh, untouched snow and the top layer of powder gets blown away. the wind acquires a white color, and it looks like the whisper of ghosts.
- the smell of jasmine
- spotify discover
- sweet potato fries
- being in love

a patch of sunlight

Today is really sunny so obviously my S.A.D. has gone off on vacation and I'm in a really good mood!

Yasmin came over last night as my guest for my college's Guest Night. We had a four-course dinner at hall and then an afterparty where we were one of the few people dancing. We both wore jumpsuits and took a ton of photos!

This morning we had breakfast at Vaults and Garden and even though it was a bit of a rush in the end because Yasmin rebooked her train so that she wouldn't miss her flight back to Geneva it was still fun. I got a vegan breakfast (in part because I didn't actually enjoy last night's dinner and wished I'd taken the plant-based option for it instead) that included avocado toast and these giant beans and really big mushrooms.

In the afternoon I had an interview for the position of Editor at The ISIS for next term. Then I wandered around Jericho and saw this bookshop that sells new books for £3. They also have old books. I found this collection of poems called Les yeux d'Elsa by Louis Aragon, published in Geneva in 1945, with some tiny moth-bitten holes on the pages. It has a lot of poems by Aragon about how enamoured he is by his wife Elsa and it's so romantic.

Les yeux d'Elsa

Tes yeux sont si profonds qu'en me penchant pour boire 

J'ai vu tous les soleils y venir se mirer 

S'y jeter à mourir tous les désespérés 

Tes yeux sont si profonds que j'y perds la mémoire 

À l'ombre des oiseaux c'est l'océan troublé 

Puis le beau temps soudain se lève et tes yeux changent 

L'été taille la nue au tablier des anges 

Le ciel n'est jamais bleu comme il l'est sur les blés 

Les vents chassent en vain les chagrins de l'azur 

Tes yeux plus clairs que lui lorsqu'une larme y luit 

Tes yeux rendent jaloux le ciel d'après la pluie 

Le verre n'est jamais si bleu qu'à sa brisure 

Mère des Sept douleurs ô lumière mouillée 

Sept glaives ont percé le prisme des couleurs 

Le jour est plus poignant qui point entre les pleurs 

L'iris troué de noir plus bleu d'être endeuillé 

Tes yeux dans le malheur ouvrent la double brèche 

Par où se reproduit le miracle des Rois 

Lorsque le coeur battant ils virent tous les trois 

Le manteau de Marie accroché dans la crèche 

Une bouche suffit au mois de Mai des mots 

Pour toutes les chansons et pour tous les hélas 

Trop peu d'un firmament pour des millions d'astres 

Il leur fallait tes yeux et leurs secrets gémeaux 

L'enfant accaparé par les belles images 

Écarquille les siens moins démesurément 

Quand tu fais les grands yeux je ne sais si tu mens 

On dirait que l'averse ouvre des fleurs sauvages 

Cachent-ils des éclairs dans cette lavande où 

Des insectes défont leurs amours violentes 

Je suis pris au filet des étoiles filantes 

Comme un marin qui meurt en mer en plein mois d'août 

J'ai retiré ce radium de la pechblende 

Et j'ai brûlé mes doigts à ce feu défendu 

Ô paradis cent fois retrouvé reperdu 

Tes yeux sont mon Pérou ma Golconde mes Indes 

Il advint qu'un beau soir l'univers se brisa 

Sur des récifs que les naufrageurs enflammèrent 

Moi je voyais briller au-dessus de la mer 

Les yeux d'Elsa les yeux d'Elsa les yeux d'Elsa 

Almost as romantic as Having a Coke with You by Frank O'Hara:

Having a Coke with You

is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles

and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them
                                                                                                              I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together for the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully
as the horse
                               it seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I’m telling you about it

Then I went to a café and read the first chapter of Junot Díaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which I really like so far. I paid twice for my latte (after sitting at the café for an hour I had forgotten that I'd paid when I ordered, so left some money on the table) which was absolutely devastating but I got over it. I walked back through University Parks, where different sports teams were having practices or matches. I saw the quidditch team near the end of their practice and it looked really fun –– people running around with sticks between their legs (that they managed to keep there without their hands)! I might join the team next year. It seems quite chill, but maybe I'm just assuming that because I can't imagine anyone who plays quidditch taking themselves all too seriously!

On my walk home I also saw a lot of flowers in bloom, and a little girl being taught how to ride a bike.

It's absolutely freezing today (my hands were cold even in gloves) but the sunshine just makes everything wonderful!

Update: I got a call in the evening from the chairman of OSPL saying that I've been selected for one of the two positions of Editor. Really excited for the coming term!!!