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Tag Archives: thoughts

Loneliness and solitude

21 Tuesday Aug 2018

Posted by Betty Zhang in Petit Passages

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feelings, life, loneliness, musings, prose, solitude, thoughts, writer, writing

snow tumblr alone girl sad emo winter pale goth ice aestheticWhat an awful word L O N E L I N E S S is! An illness of one, the words ‘illness’ and ‘one’ literally in it, along with ‘lone’ and ‘ill’. The word is most potently representative of its meaning when written in upper case letters spaced far apart, as I saw it on television this morning. Ten letters equal in height, spelling out the bleakest emotional landscape of all. L O N E L I N E S S. ‘I am so lonely, I need somebody’: loneliness is the desire for company and warmth, a shivering stranger pining for that phantom hut in the snow, glowing hearth ‘neath thatched roof under starry sky, the hearth an earthly star to the crescent moon formed by a semicircle of friends conversing jovially in its fiery berth. What warmth; what company. But the word we are discussing here is one of coldness; it even looks cold to the eye. ‘i’ is almost in the middle of the word (L O N E L I N E S S), the smallest letter, taking the least space. I suppose existence becomes faint when one cannot put oneself in relation to others. If there is no-one to recognise you for who and what you are, how and why do you exist? There is no ‘u’ in loneliness. Loneliness is an illness of one.

S O L I T U D E, on the other hand, trumps soldier with attitude, the word S O L D I E R almost entirely in it. There is an ‘i’ and a ‘u’, an ‘ode’ and a ‘soul’: an ode to your soul. Unlike its pneumonic cousin above (L O N E L I N E S S), it is stoic and unwavering in appearance. It does not cry out for company. Instead, S O L I T U D E celebrates the strength and freedom wielded by a company of one. Even far apart and in upper case the letters look sturdy and well-defined, rooted in confidence. S O L I T U D E commands not attention but admiration, self-admiration: ‘I am my own person, large and full of multitudes’. It is the friend of quiet contemplation and artistic expression—one reads, paints, writes, composes best when alone. ‘I am a complete, wholesome soul all by myself, my existence needs no reassurance for I am sure of myself,’ the word announces, proud on a podium.

Solitude is a closed fist punching the air, loneliness is a limp hand begging to be held. I punch the air. I march to the beat of my own drums. To the steady beat of my heart I say to myself: ‘I am, I am, I am’.

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

11 Tuesday Jul 2017

Posted by Betty Zhang in Opinion

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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 →

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The King Is Not Dead

05 Sunday Mar 2017

Posted by Betty Zhang in Notes, Opinion

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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.

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Can’t buy me love

26 Sunday Feb 2017

Posted by Betty Zhang in Opinion

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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 →

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Toxic comparison: the ugly side of social media

17 Tuesday Jan 2017

Posted by Betty Zhang in Opinion

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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 →

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Sorry

02 Tuesday Aug 2016

Posted by Betty Zhang in Petit Passages

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anxiety, books, health, life, literature, poem, poetry, prose, thoughts, writer, writing

book-flatlay

‘Sorry,’ I said to the cashier at the art store because I took too long to grab my bags, of which I was carrying four. And I was sorry. ‘Sorry,’ I said again on my way out, because the shop was crowded with shelves and people and I was carrying one too many bags. I did not bump into anyone or knock anything off but still I was sorry for the time and space I took when exiting. And I was sorry many times before then because the aisles were narrow and I had to get through or somebody else had to get through, either way I was sorry I troubled the other shoppers. I went to a thrift shop next and I was sorry there too, sorry for the fact that the shirt I tried on did not suit me, sorry that I did not make a purchase and they have to put it back. ‘Sorry, that’s okay, thank you so much,’ I managed, this time at the music store, because the clerk could not locate the vinyl I wanted. I was sorry that he tried for me and wasted his time when he could be doing something else. Then I was sorry I was sorry because I had started to feel real bad for myself, because the only reason I kept apologising was this—this idea that I was unworthy of their services, someone who did not deserve their products or anything for that matter. And Uber—the convenience of it all and the patience of that particular driver—had me sorry too, four times if I remember it correctly: twice for having too many bags and twice more for being confused as to where he was parked; and he did not know this but I was sorry for seating at the back too, I would have ridden shot gun had I fewer bags to carry but he probably thought I was protecting myself from him. I was sorriest when I got home and looked at all that I had bought because I thought I did not deserve them. But later that night when I was well-rested and the boulder of existence lifted from my chest new copies of Hemingway, Pushkin and Yeats were read and felt and understood and I was not sorry anymore, I was soaring.

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On plurality, a symptom of the human condition

26 Tuesday Jul 2016

Posted by Betty Zhang in Opinion

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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.

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