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alcohol, party, loud music, dancing, crowds, humid air, make-outs, pleasure, body, numbness…

after part scenes:

and next time don’t litter.

Disclaimer: It’s my casual, personal complaints about the modern arts. I am in no way to be authoritative or academic over this topic. However, since arts are meant for public appreciation, then me as part of the general public should have some say over some modern arts that we have nowadays. Either I am an utterly dull and anti-artistic person, or modern arts have some low-bar issues.

I have always been a stranger to modern visual arts. I believe the first thing I shared with my friends after visiting the MOMA in the NYC was “I can’t believe people actually pay to look at these bullshit.” Of course, I don’t mean all of the arts are nonsense. But, genuinely, yeah, some of them seem to be so. From what I have witnessed from the MOMA, modern arts seemingly have stepped on a weird path of anti-realism where obscure, hardly relatable and unintelligible arts are ridiculously glorified and upheld. Of course, you can still find art works that are either visually stimulating or intellectually meaningful/reflective, like the chairs of penises that remind us of the subtle toxic patriarchy, photography of cyberpunk-styled sustainable architectures, and blatantly explicit depictions of sex. However, you can also find things that are so obscure, dull and cliché that barely resonate me to any extent that I stared at them only to pretend that I know and understand such arts. Because, for real, after seeing hundreds of spilled ink paintings in museums around the world, it’s no longer exciting, and trying for hours to find the meanings of some randomly arranged geometric objects does not sound fun to me at all (and, believe me, not fun to personally experience). In the article that we read, Against Interpretations, the author spilled out all her feelings for me as she argued against the modern artworks that leaves so much blank space for minds that require more and more imaginative work on the part of the audience instead of just being a bit more straightforward about their ideas. If appreciating artworks ultimately becomes some intense work like analyzing an abstruse academic paper, it will ultimately become an exclusive club sports that no public would appreciate/value.

Scripted, directed and played by the great talent Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Fleabag is an incredible show that has an eponymous protagonist who constantly breaks the fourth wall and exchanges with the audience about her life in London. While navigating her midlife crisis, she was also living through the death of her best friend, indifference from her family, hostility from her step-mom, and emotional complications. Even though we were watching through a screen, you can intimately empathize with her since we are not just probing into her life through an invisible lens but constantly exchanging eyes and facial expressions with her as she constantly “zones out” from her reality to look at us, the camera, the audience who are accompanying her emotional journey. We would laugh through her crises with her dark humor and get to know her vulnerability behind her mask as if we were the only best friends she opens up to. What’s also intriguing is that fleabag had a romantic relationship with a Roman Catholic priest, who was madly in love with her yet consequently also struggling with his faith.

It is a great show because it is simply unique and well-presented. The way the audience are engaged in the life of the protagonist, the extent that we are concerned and feeling for her, the dramatic and entertaining yet relatable friend, sibling, parent and romantic relationships, and the exploration of the reconciliation between faith and worldly/sensual desire… As an audience, you feel you presence in the show, and you would contemplate over her life encounters and reflect on your own.

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Acknowledgements

Figure 1 https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/uk/lifestyle/a26852952/fleabag-season-2-cast-plot-air-date-spoilers/

Figure 2 https://www.thecrimson.com/column/personal-essays/article/2021/3/9/to-fleabag-with-grief-personal-essay/

On the first weekend of April 2022, I flew over to Nashville from Charlotte for the starting concert of Lorde’s first music tour since Covid. The Solar Power tour. However, I made this crazy one-day trip to Nashville to rewind her past album instead, the Melodrama. You see, I am a big lyrics guy. I care about lyrics and I always try to connect with them (which also means that much of the following is my personal interpretation). That’s probably why I am not a mainstream pop fan but a Stan for the 2010s Lorde, 2000s Coldplay, 1990s Oasis, and 1970s Queen because they write deep, personal, and resonating good lines.

Lorde says in her concert that she “pretty much just write[s] songs about bodies.” In her Melodrama album, her saying refers to the psychological and emotional side of the body, or more accurately, her introspection and mental projection. Her song Liability is an open confession of her own insecurity and self-doubt, and the showcase of her little mental echo room where those thoughts are reinforced–all depicted through her lyrical self-expression and third-person observation of herself. The Lourvre, on the opposite, is a blatant expression of self-confidence while the protagonist is in an obsessive and “psychopathic” relationship because “we’re the greatest, they’ll hang us in the Lourvre.” Supercut, a reminiscence of the past of “us”. Writer in the Dark, a warning to those who hurt her of what a “writer in the dark” can do in revenge. And Perfect Places, a perfect depiction of the disorientation and desperation of the new generation indulged in sensual pleasure searching for “perfect places” that don’t even might have existed–a loss of faith and self-indulgence.

Her new album, The Solar Power, has put much more focus on the experience of the physical body, which, however, made it sound cheap, cliché, and too commercialized. I personally feel that this is the fact of the industry. Too many pop musicians flood the audience with songs about the superficial side of the bodily experience, and comparatively those who genuinely dig into the equally important, emotional (not just love songs, of course)/spiritual side of the body. I want more Lorde.

In China, the community of LGBTQ+ remains misunderstood, defamed, discriminated against, underrepresented, overshadowed, and marginalized. Governmental scrutiny over the public opinions and events ensures everything in the promotion of the LGBTQ+ rights and voice is suppressed and canceled. Back in high school, I was a member of our school’s Colorscope club, an organization committed to educating our peer students and the public about sexuality and gender fluidity and promoting LGBTQ+ human rights. Colorscope had been banned for years due to its confrontation with the governmental and societal forces against LGBTQ+ rights, and when it came back during the time of my membership, we had to stay underground to prevent backfire from the scrutinizing school leaders, government officials, and parents.

Seeing the various forms of activism of LGBTQ+ activism and public acceptance of them (especially among the college students community) in the US is thus eyeopening for me. Recently, there was a drag show at Rusk that I explored with friends out of curiosity. Although quite confused initially, I have started to understand this form of artistic personal/communal/political expression. While drag show has been a long-established tradition of performance where performers would cross-dress to impersonate the other gender (initially out of the absence of female performers on stage in England), it has been recently adapted to become a stage for the queer people to express their identities and sexualities, as well as a form of underground socio-political activism. Like in the video posted, male performers dressed in female garments lip-syncs a pre-recorded tape of a female’s speech about political issues pertaining to her experience of alienation in the country. Besides of it, there were cross-dressed performers performing