YuHeng's blog

Monday

I have just read "On Nothing" by John Cage again. But I did not think that I've read it. For the longest time, I thought I had forgotten it. Forgotten that I remembered it. And so now, I turned back and read it, and it was fabulous. It was light with the touch of Gombrowicz. It was powerful, like the touch of Gombrowicz. I wonder if Cage read Gombrowicz. I am fascinated. I feel the power of nothingness flowing through me... I now think of structure. And nothing. And this is what I think: 

Structure. Nothing. Deconstructing and constructing. Nothingness grows. Pale nothingness. Something forms, emerging. A whole. A structure. A structure without structure, frameless--with or without nothing. Does it matter? A structure only for something--for a structure to emerge. I have said something as if I haven't said any at all. But we have also said something about nothingness, and we are saying it in reverse. Nothing is something. But something is not nothing. It is something, but only in the framework of nothing--so it can be something. Structure out of nothing. Construction. Nothingness emerges. The structure remains, pale, dark, glowing like the faint memory of a moon.

I believe in Cage. I shall compose poetry like I play music. I am not well versed enough in music, but I know enough to write from it. To compose out of compositions. Compositions upon piano compositions. I have abandoned structure only for freedom, but within such labyrinth of enclosed nothingness, I am lost, and being lost, depleted of all references of meaning, freedom does not exist. Freedom DOES NOT exist. I have nothing to refer to it. I DO NOT understand it. It is freedom in a dark room. A shadow at night approaching you, “rising to meet you.” But I DO NOT exist. I have abandoned structure… not for nothing. That I know. But for… the present pursual of content, of something out of the form of poetry–of framework. Of a certain nothingness that opens my consciousness. My mind. All cannot live in my mind, but all must go through my mind, like money… but it cannot dwell only in the polarities of mind and body, black and white, for every white, there is a non-black; it does not need to be black. It is simply the negation of black. But non-black suggests green, blue, yellow, red… all that is not black. And so… what will you compose.

Poetry based on time signatures.

Bach. Chopin. Why do I like chopin?

The fifths. etc.

Time

In the passing of time, a week, a day or year might go by. Or 627 days or 827 seconds. It does not matter. Does it? Everyday is here and now. Now was before as I’m writing it. And I can never capture it now. Now is fleeting, substantial, spontaneous, continuous, going, flowing. It is here and now. Now is the past. It is here and past. But because it is past, it is gone. It is here and gone. By being gone, I have no reason to cling onto it and hold onto it. I can let it go. I can let it go for good. It is here… and now only. I can only be substantial by being fleeting, spontaneous, continuous, and going and flowing like now. It is now here and now. I am here. I am now.