Thursday, Feb. 18, 2010 11:53 p.m.

secondary school friends reunion last night. we used to leave mo liu messages and scribble ugly gung jai on a notebook called 留言, and we filled 4 (number to be confirmed) of such notebook from f.3 to f.7.

everybody seemed to remember many funny stories from the past, but i seemed to have forgot everything and simply couldn't laugh whole-heartedly as they did. is that a pity? it should be, but i don't feel too much as i have no memory of the school days, so a weird way i don't really think it's a big deal. i thought it should be, but it turns out that i don't actually feel much.

memory is the asylum.
memory is the burden.

in defense of the psychological health, people suppress memories of traumatic experience, but when one sees no future, he dwells in the past.

i've been writing a study proposal as part of the school application. there is a series of work on theme of memory that i want to develop, particularly the one artwork i write about in the proposal - an installation that questions the authenticity and meaning of digital memories on the internet.

i think it's a doable topic, but maybe i need to clear up my thoughts a bit and leave out unneccessary details.

there is a contemporary australian artist called shaun wilson who has done video installations on the theme of memory for many years. i haven't looked at his works in detail but i guess they would be a very good reference. derrida and wolfgang ernst have also written a lot on that topic. james joyce is also famous for his obsession with memory.

so why do memory in the first place?

since dad left i have recurrently thought about how to freeze the memory of those few months. i wrote about it, but i missed out the sound. i rode on the bus to the hospital again trying to take pictures and videos of the journey, but the setting wouldn't be the same. i looked at the family photos, but i would miss the heat of the body, the motion and the smell. no matter what method i use, some details will be missed out inevitably.

1 or 2 months ago, one night after work. i was feeling down. there's nothing i felt like eating except congee, so i went inside nathan noodle & congee in jordan and ordered beef congee. in the quiet restaurant, i heard this old song from the radio:

時光一逝永不回，
往事只能回味......

according to the lyrics, the only thing you can do with the past is to 回味. so what exactly is 回味? what is 味? how can i capture the past and experience it once again with everything not lost?

that song of 尤雅 was the trigger.