Nok Heads and Silk Butterflies

For all that I disagree with the liberal sympathies of my school, the teacher and I do have our common ground. During one of our classes, he observed that the world does not want for human resources nor technology in the approach and resolution of its issues, whether it be the ticking demographic bomb or climate change. It is an inability to organise and to arrange resources in such a way that they fit into a cohesive system that works which underpins much of our woes today.

This will sound like aggrandisement to people who do not share my appreciation for design but I genuinely believe that much of today's problems can no longer be solved solely by the world's politicians, scientists, lawyers and philosophers alone. It is time that a designer's perspective be brought to the table.

In criticising the culture we have today and the sheer amount of material waste it generates, it is often easy to accuse designers of being at the vanguard of the implacable logic of consumption and production as functions of our civilisation. We do, after all, conceive and make desires into matter. Yet, fundamental to the creative facility is the potential to organise spaces and systems - living spaces, systems of knowledge, symbols and network spaces.

Architect, product designer, fashion designer, textile producers, interior designers, furniture designers, landscape crafters - all disciplines of design are increasingly being melded together as designers come together and speak a common language in the aim of creating a better future. It is after all designers who create the choices which consumers face and upon whose decisions our world is shaped.

I see a certain parallel between the role of the designer in today's context and the role of the scientific polymath in the 18th century. In an environment of uncertainty, where the rationale behind the existence of everyday objects must be questioned, it is the designer's role to ask the questions and, perforce, find the answers.

On that note, whoever designed the chairs that litter the dormitories ought to be shot for crimes against humanity.

C'est tout.

stealth and then, nothing

Central to the idea of camouflage is concealment or the effacement of differences that an individual might have the misfortune of possessing in relation to the community at large. Therein lies a measure of safety - for camouflage enables the individual to live without assimilation - and also, surprise.

A wearer of camouflage adapts but is not changed by his environment. He retains characteristics intrinsically different from his environment and by that incongruity between appearances and reality, he manages to surprise members of the community when the camouflage is removed.

A man who never takes off his hat even in his own home is a man who never reveals his private self. His wife kisses but a stranger.

C'est tout.

beauty amid the wreckage

The urge to create is largely an extension of the impulse to live. Conversely, the urge to create is strongest when the destructive impulse cannot be ignored. Life stands always in the mirror image of death and all artists create from destructiveness.

You cannot see the positive mass without the negative space.

You cannot create if you do not destroy.

So we cut ourselves, each atom liberated from our flesh is an atom unleashed into the world.

C'est tout.

It took her exactly two minutes and forty five seconds to convince herself that she loved him.

You surely do not believe that.

I do. It took me almost as long to do the same.

And yet, the sense of loss should last a lifetime, festering like a poisoned wound.

Ah yes, you would know.

It has taken me quite a while.

C'est tout.

sometimes, the darkness still waits.

But perhaps, not tonight.

I am here in your presence and there is no fear. You can switch off the lights, nothing else hides in the shadows.

These words are hard to form. They come unbidden in the dark and you become aware of their glitter only when you behold the faint constellation set on the ground. You try to speak but there is no need. These words, formed, do not go away.

I sit here in your presence and it is dark. Your face is veiled in shadows, your lips glisten. I want to see your eyes. They shine like frozen smoke.

You close your eyes and in the darkness behind the lids of our eyes, we meet again. Our bodies are divided by the thinnest line - there you are and here I am - but we touch.

In the darkness, sometimes, there you are. And it is enough.

C'est tout.

well night a week late

The new year did not really begin for me until my family's departure. The two weeks we shared together was well-spent and I truly do look forward to meeting them again come May.

Before writing this, I read through some of my older entries - specifically, the entry I wrote on my birthday. I think everything I wrote in there held true for the old year, more so than in past years.

In retrospect, when I predicted that 2009 would be a year of change for me, I did not really know what I was in for. I was only reminded a couple of days ago that, were it not for the miraculous intervention of a dear friend, I would not have applied for Parsons and I would have spent 2009 in Singapore.

Seeing my sister after a protracted absence was very good for the both of us. It makes me ache a little, to think that I shall be missing so much of these precious years when she takes her first steps towards womanhood. How does it feel to love with all the ferocity the heart may summon? I think I understand a measure of it with my sister.

Something changed in the year with my mother. I do not know quite how to put it but we are in a better place, as if some understanding that we had worked so hard over the years to achieve had finally set in. Family is a very powerful emblem. We make of it what we will as we grow up but what we do make of it is of great importance to the growth process.

The new year promises something else. I see a glimpse of light - a different light. It will be interesting to see if I may indeed learn the lessons I seem at the cusp of learning in the new year. We never cease to grow, so long as we are willing to move to a different place. The world is large enough to encompass all the lessons we need to learn.

C'est tout.

seeds

In a city as large as this, the proliferation of human connections and potential connections can be so overwhelming that one feels more alone when surrounded by a multitude of people than when one is sitting among the silent shadows at home.

But we can hope, can't we? So we walk the streets in the day and we cruise the dark alleyways of our shared dreams, always on the look out for that someone who returns your gaze, offers you a handshake, a hug, a kiss, something more. It is not enough that you have a thousand friends on facebook because those thousand friends are all virtual connections - their heartbeats have no warmth.

No, what you want is a real, breathing agglomeration of flesh. A person. Somebody who defies the algorithm of hellos and goodbyes, a living person who transcends the hypersensitive electronic to deliver more than the sensory. Someone who listens to you, speaks with his own cadence, looks at your soul with his, who presses his flesh so near to you his heartbeat is but a second's width from yours and it is all you can do to stop yourself from reaching up to cup his face with your hands, your warm flesh.

We are not seeking love, you and I. We wander the cityscape, eyes wide open, with hearts held out in the frozen air. We are only looking for meaningful connections. Someone who does more than wink, a twinkle in the bright mirage of the sun.

Maybe you and I - that was what we were looking for in the first place.

C'est tout.