In my life, I sought justification to an OCD level. When arguing with anyone, I have to reach a definite conclusion before I stop myself. In music or film, I seek for the same—a central thesis.?
In NYFA’s summer program when I made my first short film “Banana War,” I tried hard to make sense of everything—even the setting of two maniacs fighting over an ordinary banana. I was thrilled that with filming, I could submerge people into a world of the impossible in an almost subconscious way. And in my following practice I followed the same pattern—In making the advertisement for our school’s Got Talent Show, I incorporated shots into motivational music intentionally for a virtuosic image of the participants. Some of the footages, for example, the one with a judge surprisingly turning his head to the camera, was originally unrelated to the performance of the show but to the accidents off the stage. But when weaved in between the performance, they worked effectively to persuade the audience. Just like writing a well-constructed essay, I used specific photo composition, montage, and color grading to “force” my audience to synchronize with me.
And music was even more functional than film. Everything in music—pitch, rhythm, harmony, etc. are all reasonable to the physical level. The sensation of joyful “resonance” and sorrow “dissonance” is based upon theories of overtones and constructive sound waves. A Mozart’s piece would sound so consistent is because it is made up of repetitive motifs that develop gradually, and all of Beethoven’s sonatas would sound eventful because they follow the same pattern of development and recapitulation.
What changed my mind later wasn't any specific article or book, but a film called Manifesto. I was somewhat offended by it at first when I heard sentences like “l(fā)ogic is a mistake, and the right to wholeness is a monstrous joke.” But I thought of Debussy’s music, which I was rather confused about at first. He uses the dissonant augmented fourth relentlessly in his work and crushed most of the rules that had been set up in centuries. I cannot make sense of my feeling when listening to his Clair de lune, but I’m sure that I dreamed of an ambiguous and misty night. My unexplainable sentiments flow in the laissez-faire of Clair de lune’s formality, and I was almost provoked by the surge of moonlight when Debussy uncontrollably spreads out the broken chords. When later we were asked to write an analytic essay on Clair de lune, I tried to explain the effects he caused in a long paragraph, but at the same time, I know any of my attempts would be feeble. The original stimulus is always compromised when I put them on paper. In listening to more 19th-century music, I reconsidered the idea that “Objects have vanished like smoke. This accursed horizon ring that has imprisoned the artist and led him away from the game of destruction.” In Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring,” I found not even a tonality—There’s no thread, no logical transaction, for everything is random. But the truth is exposed more vigorously than ever—Wasn’t forest as chaotic and surprisingly full of noises of deer and elephant? Wasn’t man’s psychology as complicated and bizarre as the conflicting semitones as they offer a virgin as the sacrifice of the rite?
Later that year, I started my first composition. Way too nervous for a well-crafted piece, I stuck at a barren staff note of only four C major triads in weeks, deranging my mind with piles of unsophisticated motifs. Sitting in front of the piano, my tornado of mingling despair and confusion raged me. What if I can depict this disorderly feeling in music？A signing melody naturally came out of a minor scale in my trembling hands, following an abrupt ascending in the augmented fourth as if my body tensed up a second before the test. My piece soon exploded into “nonsenses” in the excessive modulations, but my playing became a heartfelt speech as I poured every of my stress in the keys without any compromise. I thought of Stravinsky again and seemed to grasp a clue—The “power” of music lies in its illogically emotional outburst. For the first time I attempted to "destroyed the ring of the horizon and gone out of the circle of objects. "
When planning the annual interview at TBU again, I changed my mindset. Instead of writing a set of prompts in advance, I asked the interviewer to be engaged in a random conversation with the guest. The guest can dominate the conversation and develop the topic herself. The conversation did sometimes halt in awkward silence, and the guest was talking about her failure in a relationship much more than her excellent academic achievement which we intended to hear. But she laughed and cried as an emotional girl rather than a two-dimensional figure with the top-ranked grades. I saw a brand new possibility, as we may “believe in the pure joy of the man, who sets off from whatever point he chooses, along with any other path save a reasonable one, and arrives wherever he can.” Truth and honesty can as well move people most unexpectedly.
In the past, I hardly presented the truth for it is tedious and meaningless. I want to make a point that is dramatic enough to catch eyes, that is serious enough to impress people. But could the questions become an answer? Isn’t it central to philosophy its constant arguments, and essence of humanity the volatile self? The lack of thesis may be criticized as a failed attempt to communicate, but it defines me as an actual human who is as the film Manifesto said “infinite and shapeless variation.” I would not try to convince anymore, for I don’t have a common sense. Just like arguing a point with someone in a talk, I cannot overturn my audiences’ minds with merely logic, nor can I manipulate how they perceive and what they think in the end. I can only present all of myself with ultimate sincerity, only then can the audiences lay down their guards and truly listen.
