I will never get over this exhibition
I saw Motohiko Odani’s works for the first time when I was 19, during my Tokyo internship. It blew me away. What else can I say, to describe an experience that shifted something in me? I’m not sure whether it was gratitude, joy or a feeling of sadness and calm. I stood next to the Newborns and wanted to cry, to thank him for giving me this gift of beauty and life.
I think I took Tokyo, and what it offered, for granted during those 2 months. I have a notebook that I filled to the brim with postcards, pictures, notes taken during exhibition visits crammed into those 60 days - and nearly 3 years on, I find myself coming back to this book and re-learning things about the country, its richness of art and culture and the lessons I learnt in that short period of time. Art is for everyone, regardless of age, gender, race, religion. Art is more than expression - it is the gift of life that keeps giving. It renews you, restores you. I look at Odani’s works and I am once again reminded of why I chose to study the workings of art, the history of this beautiful way of life, and why I love everything about it - from sleepless nights spent researching, to the process of creating, to the end result that morphs into an entity of its own - I sold my heart to this craft a long time ago, and now I am reminded of why I willingly gave it away.
http://www.tokyoartbeat.com/tablog/entries.en/2010/01/angels-and-demons-in-ginza.html
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Because we’ve got plenty of time
to grow old and die
But when at last your beauty’s faded
you’ll be glad that I have waited for you
When you’re done
with being beautiful and young
When that course is run, then come to me
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It wasn’t the first time I laid eyes on you, or when we first shared a joke and laughed under the curious gazes of mutual friends. It wasn’t when I wiped the side of my mouth with my napkin, demurely, as if I thought you would have bothered caring about my appearance, or the way I held myself in public. I suppose I changed, slowly, loosening my guard and throwing all caution to the wind - I cannot control these feelings I have, not just of you, but of everything to do with my life. I cry too much, I laugh too loudly, I grin too widely, I wail in despair. I am a tightly bound, rubber banded ball of desire, anger, excitement, depression, everything to do with you and not about you. I am this personality encased in an eggshell of a pandoric nightmare. I am supposed to be you, I am supposed to be so in love with you that I can wake up one morning and realize I am no longer the person my mother gave birth to - in essence, you gave birth to the new me, someone who is a part of you. So why does it feel as though I don’t want this to last? Somewhere in me, I am hoping we end things in total chaos. With you screaming my name, with me smashing plates. I want our last memory together to be the nightmare I envision every night as we curl in bed together, holding hands with you whispering my name in my ear, and me smiling to myself in contentment. I want to remember us tearing each other apart, no tears, no sadness, no despair, just pure unbridled fury. After the lust, nostalgia, comfort and security have been stripped away, all that is left between us is an untouched pool of fire we have both been afraid to drink out of. In the end, we are just this. And that is all I want to offer to you in our final moment.
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reading this piece and trying not to cry at the way BBJX has broken my heart on so many levels…
Listening to: Mr. Tambourine Man - Bob Dylan
I think it’s no secret that I ship 14th//Ruo Xi and my enthusiasm for 4th/Ruo Xi fluctuates depending on my mood. But the relationship that I find most interesting in this entire series has to be between Fourth and his wife. I don’t necessarily ship them in the fangirling sense, but I like how their relationship is played out.
Fourth makes it no secret that he doesn’t love her with a passion, but still he respects her and treats her well. In an epilogue to the novel, when she dies, she asks him if he could do it over, whether he would still marry her. He answers that she has always been his only choice for a first wife and consort.
The relationship is so different from the passion between him and Ruo Xi, but I don’t think you could say that there is indifference between them. Far from it. What I love most about their relationship is that he would never cast her aside, even for Ruo Xi.
It shows not only the strength of their relationship, but also speaks volume for Fourth as a character. Unlike Eighth, who casually promises Ruo Xi to make her his Empress if he becomes Emperor (thus basically casting Ming Hui aside though if he does become Emperor, it would be due to her family’s support that makes him so), Fourth is blatantly realistic. He would not promise Ruo Xi anything he cannot keep in good conscience.
As for her, she knows he doesn’t love her, but she knows where they stand with each other, what courtesy require of them. I don’t think you can say she’s in love with him, but there’s no doubt that she has affections for him. She understands that the marriage between them was about duty first and feelings second, so she doesn’t demand of him the attention that he can’t give.
And this couple somehow restore my faith in humanity, as I began watching BBJX right after New Huan Zhu Ge Ge. One of the things that made me cry in rage in NHZGG was the callous way that *sigh I don’t want to call him this* Yong Qi treats Xin Rong, who, really, didn’t do much to really deserve all the abuse the script and the fans heap on her.
The way I see it, Yong Qi could marry someone he doesn’t love, but he would man up and deal with it. He certainly would not resort to calling her a whore to her face, or verbally and (nearly) physically abusing her, or have a child with her with the knowledge that the moment the child was born, he would abandon them both. There’s no love, but that doesn’t mean there can’t be respect or just…co-existence. And if you take into consideration the time period, Xin Rong only did what was expected of her, so much that she, as a character, becomes a caricature and possessing no depth whatsoever.
Fourth and his wife is what Yong Qi and Xin Rong could have been, if they possessed even a miniscule amount of maturity and depth to them. But unforunately they don’t, and it is the way he treats Xin Rong, rather than anything, that made me weep for the Fifth Prince that I loved in the original.
(Oh, my Yong Qi is still intact in my mind and in my fics, but it makes me sad that Qiong Yao could turn the character into someone I wouldn’t approach with a ten-foot pole in the remake.)
(via bubujingxin)
