7am.cda

Universal feeling of work anxiety.mp3

I've changed the name of my blog to '7am', because its significance in culture is associated with waking up for the new (work) day, but metaphorically too. There's an almost universal dread that comes along with it.  Even the pit in the stomach anxiety the day before. I'm feeling that ugly, and privileged feeling now, after having 2 weeks off work. When I was in my teens, I had a pattern of recurring dreams at the last leg of the holidays, before the start of school. I used to dream of missing the school bus. These dreams morphed into dreams of taking maths tests at work - I had that last night and didn't sleep well. (It didn't help that it's January and Stranger Things finished.) Again this is a privileged statement - but I'm miles away from the MCR concert and seeing the Venice Biennale, so I feel like I'm in barren land.

I made a digital drawing of a radio and merged it with radio waves and 7am. There's a lot of implicit tropes in the creative community surrounding radios as a visual code and 'tuning into information'.

Lesser of 2 evils.mp3

It's the obligation of the external rules that's causing my unconscious to become unease. I don't think we can get away from the universal dread of routines, even though it keeps us mentally in check. I've just changed my work shift schedules too, from 5pm-1am back to 6am-6pm. I think I like or hate them both equally. When I was on the latter shift, I'd find myself preferring the former one, and vice versa. It doesn't matter whether what the job is, what field it is in, and how prestigious it is, I'd end up not liking it as much as I hoped - hoped - only to end up missing it after it's gone. I sometimes think about retiring (and I've tried making art as my main job). But in living in it (irresponsibly - I took a gap year after my first graduation, and my family footed the bill) and emotionally dissecting it, I ended up worrying about existential matters, such as my work identity and legitimacy. Legitimacy matters a lot more than I let on. It's pretty absurd really. And it doesn't matter how many videos I watch of people talking about this feeling, or even after talking to friends, I still feel deeply alone on this. The social consensus might say I'm overreacting, but this is how I feel.

I feel this after every weekend, and it's worse after annual leave, especially one where I spend time with loved ones. I've slept off all my sleep debt on annual leave, but it will come back this week, and I'll have no energy outside work again. 

Camus would have said to embrace life passionately, but I think it’s better to not become attached to life circumstances too seriously, but again, I might be privileged to recognise, and even tolerate with this aspect of life. [It might change in the future when I do finally fall in love with my endeavours, but it wouldn't make this interpretation of life invalid.]

4am.mp3

I slept worse than the night before. I woke up every hour, then between 3 and 4am, I woke up every few minutes. One of my dreams was kind of weird. The dream started when I was interrupted by my former classmate and I took my headphones off. We were in a studio space, and it was a seminar between us two and someone who taught me. My classmate was talking about my artwork of the paint splatters I did directly on the floor and on the wall of one of the shows. I was discombobulated, because I was wearing headphones. She didn’t have to say anything in the dream, I felt her energy. My classmate felt like his energy reminding me of my past work. (It’s the manifestation of the animus and anima again). I apologised for listening to music, but was then puzzled, as no music was playing. Could headphones be a portal? like in one of Lee Bul’s works involving headphones in an installation that connects the past with present. What if me listening to music on headphones in the dream world, is the time I’m awake in real life? It’s absurd to contemplate about, but I’d like to think what if I’m having conversations with these people on a different spatial plane? Maybe I’m being crazy. Got to defrost the car now in real life, or the non-metaphysical. Maybe abstract thought is what saves us from the clutches of the raw chaotic world. 

Side note on good and bad (vs the messy comprehension).mp3

Upon reflecting and analysing on the moralities of key characters’ dynamics in Wicked and Stranger Things - What if everyone has a point of view, and believes their view is the good one? The good and bad are myths of what we were told in childhood about morality? And we’re actually in amoral systems that clutches on the alopecic hope of childhood beliefs? Listen to Wonderful for wicked:for good. This song is self referential. He has a point when he sang about history being the true/untrue - it has a lot of uncredited labour that’s misattributed to key figures. If I learnt anything from the wizard, it’s this quote of ‘nothing bonds communities together like a common enemy.’ Be it in atrocities like wars, or academically in the battle of subjects, where the opposing subject is viewed as ‘bad’. I don’t view it personally - it’s just an observation of humanity. 

Maybe the quote from the wizard (the zeitgeist of the 21st century) is the pessimistic view of bonding communities, what is its optimistic equal where enthusiasm of humanity emanates from? Just curious on that, think we’ll benefit from having a news outlet that gives us positive things on the day (like stories of an ordinary anonymous stranger finding a wallet and returning it to the owner. Not having a name or distinctive ‘brand’ attached to the good deed makes the deed more sincere). I quite liked The New Day newspaper that was out in 2016. I first came across it in hospital and I liked the ordinary narratives the journalists used. It was a shame it finished not long after starting. Could this be attributed to ‘politics sells more’? 

The working impression I’m getting about Elphaba, is that she is naïve (which is the target of opportunist scapegoating), especially when Boq sang about the cowardly lion in March of the witch hunters. He sang that Elphaba didn’t ’let the lion make his own mistakes’. Sometimes you have to let the person make their own mistakes in order for them to learn, even though you have to watch them suffer as a result of their own actions.

It’s interesting how Henry in stranger things was also naïve before he became a vessel for darkness to utilise (but the moral narrative of stranger things is more black and white, compared to Wicked).