• About
  • Beauty
  • Petit Passages
  • Notes
  • Conversations
  • Letters
  • Reviews
  • Opinion
  • Contact

the rose garden

the rose garden

Category Archives: Opinion

A sound note on music’s unique, equalising ability to evoke human emotion

11 Tuesday Jul 2017

Posted by Betty Zhang in Opinion

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

academia, arts, culture, emotion, human experience, music, Opinion, sociology, thoughts, writer, writing

How to begin a manifesto? Fiery-veined passion propelled me to grasp for words that equalled Chopin’s effect. Then, having failed that, I scrambled for pictures; moving pictures, still pictures, pictures of girls posing as dryads, twirling ballerinas—I even enlisted the help of one Joe Wright, filmmaker extraordinaire. All of this, to no avail. My folly, I realised with aching clarity on this cold winter afternoon with only his music for company, stems chiefly from the vain belief that Continue reading →

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

Like this:

Like Loading...

The King Is Not Dead

05 Sunday Mar 2017

Posted by Betty Zhang in Notes, Opinion

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

1950s, america, culture, elvis, elvis presley, icon, music, musings, Opinion, pop culture, rock, thoughts, twentieth century

elvis.jpg‘There’ll never be another Elvis,’ said the old man to the impersonator. But there needn’t be, not when he is survived and granted eternal life by his works, influence, and legacy. Why would we need another Elvis when he is the one and only? The king never died; he is unsurpassable; long live the king.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

Like this:

Like Loading...

Can’t buy me love

26 Sunday Feb 2017

Posted by Betty Zhang in Opinion

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

life, love, marriage, music, musings, Opinion, romance, song, the beatles, thoughts, writer, writing

the beatles.jpg

“Tell me that you want those kind of things/That money just can’t buy/I don’t care too much for money/For money can’t buy me love”: these are the words of wisdom sang by Paul McCartney on The Beatles’ 1964 hit “Can’t Buy Me Love” which he wrote with John Lennon. They send me soul-searching every time I hear it, and I hear it a lot because A Hard Day’s Night is one of my favourite albums. Continue reading →

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

Like this:

Like Loading...

Youth

02 Thursday Feb 2017

Posted by Betty Zhang in Opinion, Petit Passages

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

change, empowerment, english, inspiration, literature, Opinion, poem, poet, prose, writer, writing, youth

indie-tumblr

Youth is vitality, excess collagen, fluids and oil from our pores. Our restlessness feels edgeless like the galaxy, scary and exciting like exploding stars, new like unopened books.

Youth is arrogance—we act as if we invented sex, and mock the old for their weary bones. But they were once young like us and was it not from them you and I and our parents sprang?

Youth is rage, against our predecessors’ norms, against our parents’ wishes, against the preachers and teachers who know not what it is to be young today no more than theirs did, against our own better judgement.

Youth is power: it is power harnessed from our vitality, arrogance, and rage. We can change the future because it is ours—because, if not us, who?

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

Like this:

Like Loading...

Toxic comparison: the ugly side of social media

17 Tuesday Jan 2017

Posted by Betty Zhang in Opinion

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

article, blogging, debate, gen y, happiness, internet, mental health, musings, Opinion, social media, technology, thoughts, writer, writing

social-media

Phone hot and heavy in your exhausted hand, you scroll down Instagram, the fourth (or is it fifth?) time you have done so in the past hour. You pay close attention to posts by female account holders—they set the standard against which you measure yourself. Some girls make you feel like Princess Buttercup (rare), others a big green stinking ogre (torturously frequent). Some women appear so rich and successful, with their marble apartments and glossy jobs in fancy faraway places like London and New York, that it fills your chest and stomach with a hollow despair faintly resembling hunger. Others have so many followers and fans that thinking about it makes your head spin. On the flip side, some have so little, or post such poor content that you are instantly elevated, in your own twisted head, from poor imposter to plush super-master.

It all comes down to comparison and self-perception, the root of all glee, all unhappiness. And the issue at hand is social media, Continue reading →

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

Like this:

Like Loading...

The loneliest second

06 Friday Jan 2017

Posted by Betty Zhang in Opinion

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

anxiety, career, happiness, happy new year, life, memoir, new year, new year's resolutions, personal, writer, writing

cinderella gif.gif

Every year, on the 31st of December, the old year and the new are separated by a flimsy second at 23:59:59. For me, not for as long as I remember but as the years piled on and forced me into the 25th anniversary of my existence with an unrelenting hand, that second is the loneliest, saddest, most hateful out of all the 31,536,000 seconds there are in a year. Continue reading →

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

Like this:

Like Loading...

My Anglo-American Christmas

27 Tuesday Dec 2016

Posted by Betty Zhang in Opinion

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

america, books, charles dickens, christmas, cinema, culture, england, family, film, food, harry potter, history, holidays, j. k. rowling, life, memory, movie, music, nostalgia, pop culture, reading, television

vintage christmas.jpg

I am Chinese, my family is small and we are not religious. We don’t do gifts and parties, nor do we transform our home into a tricolour tinsel and cedar wonderland. I never even believed in Santa, thanks to my mother’s casual ‘Santa and magic and stuff are not real, it’s all made up’ when I was very young.

For Christians, Christmas is the birth of Jesus. For the non-religious, it is about Santa, reindeers, and snow. For us, it is a time to eat together: we mark the day celebrated by many with food and family, the pillars of Chinese culture, and I would not have it any other way.

But Christmas itself—be your take on it Christian or capitalist—is not Chinese, no matter how I celebrate it. Christmas in my mind is a kaleidoscope of Anglo-American sights and sounds. Continue reading →

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

Like this:

Like Loading...

Rebel Without a Cause (1955): a retrospective

21 Friday Oct 2016

Posted by Betty Zhang in Opinion, Reviews

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

adulthood, cinema, film, hollywood, james dean, life, prose, rebel without a cause, retrospective, teenager, vintage, writer, writing

rebel-without-a-cause

The disillusioned teenager in me never died. James Dean called and I answered; that is to say, his brutally realistic portrayal of troubled teen Jim Stark reminded me of myself all those years ago—I think 15 is the average age at which one sheds their childhood coil—when, along with my peers, it became more apparent than ever to us that pain and suffering are inevitable, as is death.

The angst was real and it was raw. For the hypersensitive ones who felt and thought about everything deeply and personally, creative expression Continue reading →

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

Like this:

Like Loading...

In defence of art

09 Tuesday Aug 2016

Posted by Betty Zhang in Opinion

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

art, arts, Beauty, books, culture, literature, love, music, poem, poetry, prose, world, writer, writing

Bowie-1975-e1452703772242.jpg

Architects design buildings, which are then built and maintained by builders, plumbers, and electricians. These buildings provide necessary living and working spaces for residents and professionals who, in turn, contribute to their society and economy. Politicians govern, lawyers defend, doctors save lives, businesses of all shapes and sizes provide essential goods and services. Scientists, physicists, engineers, and astronomers brought humanity to the moon. The world as we know it will not cease to exist without art and its practitioners but without moonage daydreamers, boy wizards, star-crossed lovers and those whose passion or profession it is to observe, think, analyse, and create, Earth is merely that which orbits the Sun, a celestial body where the passage of time is marked by births, deaths, and unexamined lives.

So here’s to poems about nature and beauty, songs about love, books that changed the world, and paintings that bewitch with their illusions of light and movement; here’s to films that enchant and inspire, to great teachers and their scholars, to thinkers, poets, writers, artists, composers, musicians, directors—to anyone who immortalised their human experience in art form.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

Like this:

Like Loading...

On plurality, a symptom of the human condition

26 Tuesday Jul 2016

Posted by Betty Zhang in Opinion

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

human condition, life, literature, poem, poetry, postmodernism, prose, thoughts, writer, writing

andy warhol.jpg

We are nothing if not plural, in our daily dalliances with plural others who, just like us, adjust their persona to suit different situations, places, and peoples.

We are nothing if not plural, when we say one thing yet behave otherwise; we attempt to reduce ourselves to absolutes in the hopes that by conveying a singular self to another they’d understand our ‘true’ selves but how could they, when we are all complex and contradictory beings struggling to make sense of ourselves, of which there are many?

We are nothing if not plural, yesterday today and tomorrow, for people change and no-one goes from birth to death unmarked by life, by others, by themselves.

We are plural, you and I, so let us not confine ourselves to forced categories and false pretences out of fear of not being understood. Let us run free and admit that we are nothing but inconstant, temperamental: multiple versions of a work in progress until we expire.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

Like this:

Like Loading...
← Older posts
Follow the rose garden on WordPress.com

Categories

Archives

Visitors

  • 7,986 came & smelt the roses

Top Posts & Pages

  • Meatier than wursts: big long German words
  • Sorry
  • An afternoon's worth
  • Max Errman, "Desperata: Prose for a Way Out of Life"
  • Elegy for Charlie
  • Vincent
  • A letter to James Dean on sensitivity, introversion, & metaphysical relationships
  • Prettier in purple
  • DIY or die 
  • Eyes

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • the rose garden
    • Join 87 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • the rose garden
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...
 

    %d bloggers like this: