Miscellany

I stopped working on my project for quite a long time because I have not read many books these days. It’s a bad habit, and I want to fight it at the beginning of this month. This time, I will just write down whatever comes to my mind these days and then collect it all together.

Let’s begin with some words I have overheard lately. The first one lingering in my mind is “archaic.” Nowadays, with the rapid development of technology, lots of people regard many things as “archaic.” During my winter break, I found that the way we sent messages to each other in old days is somewhat obsolete. My family couldn’t write blessing messages without the help of AI, and youngsters were more familiar with posting “Happy New Year” in “Moments.” While I drafted my message, I had to test whether my text looked AI-generated. I would never regard the way people speak as “archaic.” Sometimes I noticed short videos saying, “Hey, how should I respond to this, ChatGPT?” Just because we don’t send handwritten letters these days doesn’t mean we should not learn how to write them. Computers and voice recognition are powerful, but we don’t need to keep a record of everything on a screen. Most of the time, I think handwriting is one of the best ways to show one’s sincerity and emotion. Even though I am no longer in primary school, I still spend some time practicing cursive handwriting from time to time. The same goes for speaking. It is people who want to express their ideas, so we should be able to send text messages without the help of others. These are not old-fashioned skills, and I hope they won’t become something we are proud of only in hindsight someday.

Still staying on this topic, I want to discuss the taste of art. I think “art” is sometimes one of the most common things viewed as “archaic.” Nowadays, people can too easily generate something in a “Shakespeare” style, and they take what they know for granted. I would not say this is a disrespectful attitude, for I myself do not have the ability to write in a Shakespearean style, but it is something worth considering. To elaborate on this topic a little bit, I want to say something about the music I listen to these days. With an “archaic” taste, I have been fond of the band Queen lately. I have to admit that it is kind of crazy to listen to these “old guys” roaring late at night.

The main point I want to make is what I have learned from these songs. Honestly, there are tons of defects in their performances. In some concert recordings, they even forgot the words or sang off-key (although most of the time they gave the best performances I have ever seen). I am not a skilled musician, but I can still feel the real power in their lives. They strove for success without disguise; they asked for love deep in their souls; they fought for peace and equality from the first time they appeared on stage. At that time they were famous for their unique style of singing and composing, and after 50 or so years, I still think they are innovative. They are truly singing for themselves. To some extent, I still believe that even though a quarter of the 21st century has passed, music produced in the 21st century still lives in the shadow of the 20th century.

So let’s dig deeper and find out why. How do we make a truly creative artifact? I cannot understand some modern artists filling jars with their urine in galleries and proudly waving a banner, “This is art!” An unavoidable source of art is the naive impulse lying in the strongly beating hearts and intensely turbulent veins of humans (I use these words just to show the crouching force of describing everything too vividly under my decent wording). Most musicians are too dedicated to the details of rhythm and lyrics, and there is no place for emotions and feelings. Singers are carefully told to follow instructions from masters to express the sentiment they are asked to convey. Today, I can still feel the power from Queen’s songs because they were truly looking for “somebody to love,” and I think they were truly “having a good time” while singing.

Maybe I digressed a little, but let’s get back to the “archaic” part of this discussion. We often find some artifacts archaic just because they are classics. We admire them and reuse them. There is no need to “surpass” them, but we can have our own style if we say what we want to say. I think this is the spirit that will never be “archaic.”