I have been put out of my 5,000 word misery. finally. after getting no sleep and doing an all-nighter on sunday night - which at one point i nearly did go blind - i completed my Wong Kar-Wai essay and handed it in, albeit one hour late.
I am so much happier with this essay than with the first film aesthetics one that I did in the first term. Hopefully my WKW efforts will not have gone to waste.. I've read so much about him and watched every single one of his bloody films (except Ashes of Time which I could not get a copy of, but i'm sure i might have seen it someplace/time else) that i feel like 5,000 words do not do justice to the amount of research and knowledge i currently possess.
but y'know after every essay, once you've signed your name on that cover sheet and it's in and there's nothing else you could do about it - every second after that is somewhat like pulling the plug on the drainhole after a bath - all the information and epiphanies you have uncovered during the gruelling writing process starts rushing out of your brain like the diffusion of air in the atmosphere. all the intricacies of your essay (like knowing exactly which quote comes from which page number of which book and the colour and position of the post-it note you have attached to it) drain our of your mind, inversely proportion to the time you have spent on collecting it.
and it's worse with exams.
you spend weeks (or in my case, probably just days) revising for it and it all comes down to that defining hour where you spew all you possibly can from your fried brain and immediately after that, as you walk out of an exam hall, you almost feel a light-headed physical whoosh which 1. could either be pure relief of getting it over and done with or 2. the manifestation of actual molecules of information making its exit from your brain.
An hour after your exam, don't you often feel you can't even remember a fraction of what your mind was holding before the exam?
Anyway, my whole point was that I've closed a chapter with that essay now. And sadly, all to soon, I've got to open another one and slog through another 5,000 word essay - the last of my academic undergraduate life. incidentally, it is also an essay for the module i innately dislike most and find an absolute waste of time. having said that, i'm beginning to see a certain structure and value of what they were trying to teach us - some of which succeeded, and some of which failed miserably. I think I wouldn't have been so pre-disposed against this Culture, Text and Identity module if it wasn't for the fact that the damn department forced all third year film-lit students to take. like it was a random choice.. oh no one takes any interest in the german department, no one's taking our modules! oh no no no! what shall we do? Ooh! I know! We'll make it a compulsory module for all... hm... let's see which degree we should pick to force them to do this german department module... ooh i know, this makes so much sense... we'll pick the film and literature students to do it just because!
.......
enough said.
Anyway , getting to the REAL point of my blog - the motivation behind the rarity of my clicking 'create new post', was that... in the midst of random surfing and reading random blogs today (such an extreme luxury at this point in time - but hey, i can't sleep, i'm thinking about loads of shit and i am in no mood to do any more work just as yet), i have uncovered this phenomena of what i term as the... uncomfortable blogs.
Not that the blog displays uncomfortability in its writing style or html/skins or whatever... but I'm referring to the feeling it makes one feel as one peruses it.
It's that feeling of walking into a room accidentally when porn is showing and you don't want to see it but that image has already registered itself in your mind and you can't tear your eyes away from it in that moment it cunningly makes its way into the more voyueristic part of your mind.
I am continually appalled at the details some people provide on their blogs and the extent of the effort to which they make their personal lives known to virtually every single person on the world that clicks on an internet browser.
There are some that reveal details in a sophisticated manner.. there are some that are just plain uncomfortable.
I can understand when blogs are private and it functions more like a diary than anything else and one can write absolutely everything and anything they want on their mind so long as 1. no one else knows the url for the blog and 2. the posts are published anonymously, with no actual real names mentioned, published with a psuedonym such that even if a random stranger should stumble on it, they wouldn't know even if it was their best friend's blog they were reading (on this point, i sometimes wonder if any of my best friends read my secret blog, they would suss out that it was mine)....
BUT if it was a public blog, where one is in full knowledge they have a consistent readership, how can anyone be so comfortable with writing details of their life knowing that someone, anyone of your friends, family, dog, cat etc... would definitely be reading it.. and know that it was you.
I sometimes have nightmares that any of my contacts that I've made over my journalism stints of the last three years would stumble on my blog and go... ah ha! I know what this journalist is all about. So....maybe I could hint at knowing the personal details of her life and work at some sort of blackmail and she'd write a better-angled story that's gonna make my company look good!
and that is only the mildest of my nightmares relating to this.
I remain quite proud that my blog remains un-googable in association with my name. currently, my name googled only contains my past journalism work... (and oh, details of a place named after my surname!)
Anyway, (for the third time now I noticed... I must be on blogging fire) my brother once blogged about this crush he had on this girl - and after going out with her on the first date, he published full details of every single nuance/instance/moment of his date, including descriptions of when he was toying with the idea of holding her hand, what she was doing, how she reacted and promptly wrote how much he adored her. while it is all very cute and sweet and romantic in a way.. the only way he got away with it (in my mind) is he's a teenager and they are excused to do that...
the thing is. she eventually read the blog. or at least i got the impression so.
Can you imagine?! Reading about your first date, written in full glory, by the person you'd just went out with...
it takes the mystery out of life. the shy and coy guessing game one plays after just going out with a person.. wondering what he/she is thinking.. what they think about you..
AND your friends are reading it too and (very possibly) laughing at you. Think, for eg, reading this:
she was very sweet... but after dinner, we had chocolate pudding and she had a bit of it stuck between her teeth which made it look like it was decaying. it didn't look that good, to be honest... but i was too polite to say anything. besides, i have discovered maybe having things stuck between your teeth could be a turn-on!
*shudder*
Some things I'd rather not know, thank you very much.
(The above is not from personal experience, and the truth of the last sentence, definitely not so.)
Some people write about their experiences in bed, some about their depressions..others about their insecurities... the list is endless.
I think to myself.. what if I write something really personal about say, this wonderful moment I've shared with x... or the way so-and-so kissed me... and then an ex-boyfriend... or... an ex-boss reads it?!
or the way so-and-so betrayed me, what a bitch so-and-so is... and then so-and-so reads it?
That is what I call uncomfortable blogging.
But everyone is entitled to themselves... I fully acknowledge that. Maybe it's just me who's not brave enough to share those details and publish it to the rest of the world.
I've always thought I would write a book. But if I cannot publish my innermost details in a blog, how can I think about publishing it in a book?
That's something I have to get past...till I actually reach the day I have a book to publish, of course.
On some level, I think the people behind these faceless blogs who share such details are subconsciously screaming out for it to be known. maybe it's a catharsis. maybe they want people to know. maybe they feel good that they know people know. or maybe they just don't care.
I relish turning over those moments in my mind... and maybe sometimes I wish people could know how amazing these moments were, exactly how it felt then, and the depth of the conflict of my emotions....
But for now, I think I'll keep those intimate memories for myself.
Maybe someday I'll manage to publish it.
Then, my only hope, is it will make a good read.
I don't want to write an uncomfortable blog...
or perhaps my uncomfortability only arises when anonymity isn't present.
Go figure.
