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Time: Roaring 1980s, Place: China, Dress code: simply red | Dirty dancing with the age of innocence

9/19/2011

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  • "The persons of their world lived in an atmosphere of faint implications and pale delicacies, and the fact that he and she understood each other without a word seemed to the young man to bring them nearer than any explanation would have done."
                                                                                       - The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton

Back then I was a college student,  a terrified and terrifying product of the social system I belonged to; a young girl who knew nothing and expected everything. Then one day, she began to think about the world where truth was never said. The moment I knew, I had left the buoys of false promises and tumbled along the wild waves , unleashed, powerful and fresh, full of tastes of new hopes. There, in the 80s, in China, began my voyage  towards uncharted seas... 
Already feeling all at sea? Good, because I'm not going to leave you alone. Here below I have put together a film review plus trailer, a collection of old photography, and a song to show you the Age of Innocence -- my age of innocence -- and how I would feel when I wake up in Beijing today, if I were there.

* In search of sex and politics: a cinema review published yesterday in Brave New World. 
(I place here another trailer, which is better than the one I chose for the published article. It's in French.)


** Here is a slideshow of images from the past. I'm in none of these, but it's definitely me you see in there. Click on image to play.

And finally, this is the song of ...loss. I don't know exactly how, but it is.
I hope that through words, colours and sounds I have brought a remote time and place closer to your world. This feels like a diary. There, you have just had a peepshow into my heart. Not bad, huh?

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Not "it" girl but "ti" girl

9/18/2011

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“No, said Heron, Dedalus is a model youth. He doesn’t smoke and he doesn’t go to bazaars and he doesn’t flirt and he doesn’t damn anything or damn all.” James Joyce, A portrait of the artist as a young man.

I confess that being an independent artist/writer is a downright bore: you never get to live! First rate artists, second or even third rate life, plain truth. Why does one choose such non-life then, I wondered. Because through writing, through that process, you realise that you become more intelligent, and more honest and more imaginative than they can be in any other part of their
life. BOO! I don’t feel the least imaginative for the past weeks, that’s the reality -- my reality. The process of writing a novel is like the life of an accountant; balancing, measurement, chartering in the hope that in the end the bits of  information will fit into a plot. You have to make them fit.. A novelist is a rotten, fishy booker just like any booker is who is worth your while, and the only thing a writer cares about is the storyline (did they tell you it's the message, or moral, which is infinitely more horrid?). I molest the heart of helpless boys and girls with sadistic pleasure. I  even kill to serve my very own purpose! I feel damn responsible for their humble fate put into my hand because life imitates an onion -- life as we know it LOVE tears. Artful tears if possible.  

However, September/October are not about art. These are tax months. It’s about living a real life. Which means I have to leave my dark, lonely cave of creation and go to real places and see and talk to real people. To better organise myself (I’m an accountant after all), I enlist here the events that involve me and my work the coming autumn. Check out the urls I grabbed together. And, most importantly, if you happen to be in the neighbourhood,  do please pop around. It would be quite lovely.

 As visual artist: Arti 11 in The Hague, The Netherlands. I will be attending the opening of the art fair and showing some of my works during the occasion.
http://www.arti10.nl/217/english.html.
Esteelie is the gallery that represents me and my artworks.

As author on 8th Octorber during the Library Festival in London:
http://www.vaani.org/search/label/Butterfly

Again as author again in London on 15th October during the South Asian Literature Festival:  http://southasianlitfest.com/artists/julie-oyang/

Then I will gladly retreat to my dark cave and prepare my Kindle (see my earlier post for a blurb). Someone said today that I'm an "it" girl. I feel more a "ti" girl, terribly infinitesimal in front of facts of Life, like a butterfly. How elusive it may sound, in chaos theory it is stated that a small change at one place can result in large differences to a later state. More in concreto, for example, Irene passing NYC recently could be the result of a butterfly flapping its wings on the shore of the Yangtze several weeks before.
I close with a teaser trailer I made to broadcast my forthcoming title. You are very welcome to RSS this blog as I shall update my activities here, and/or subscribe to my youtube channel I opened only last week. 

                                                                            Click on me and hope you enjoy >>>>
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It's golden and it's black: it's...shhhhhh

9/13/2011

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“The Aoyama Reien from the Meiji era is held by Tokyoites to be the most beautiful spot of the capital. In daylight hours, traces of incense from the burial ground lends a benign, impenetrable look to the colossal glass buildings lining up the streets, harmoniously mingling with the pale scent of flowers and hushed aromas of fresh pastry. Visitors to the graveyard would notice an old man of measured gait and unflustered guise taking to a quiet corner. For a few minutes he would sit still, lost in a remote ocean of memories. People assume he is talking to the dead, and if they could have heard his mind, they would catch these lines cited over and over. Ce toit tranquille, où marchent des colombes, entre les pins palpite, entre les tombes;Midi le juste y compose de feux. La mer, la mer, toujours recommencee…the sea in flames, that sea forever starting and re-starting. They watch him pull out a new sheet of paper. The rest of the day he shall not hear black crows cry, his pen scratching away on the grainy surface. He likes the fan shape of paper of his choice. It helps him remember that any storm in the world will pass, damp typhoon, destructive hurricane, cosmic cyclone, any brouhaha in the pantheon of weather, except a tickling summer breeze of memory that enters his heart like a billowing smooth waltz and tears it apart... ”
                                                                                                                                                                                          
                                                                                                                         Butterfly, a novel by Julie O'Yang 
                                                                                                     
Cover design by the author

Set against the backdrop of the Second World War/Sino-Japanese war (1931-1945), the story centres around the fatal love between a married Chinese woman and a young Japanese soldier. However, the fantastic tale is not as simple as its plot suggests. In the forties of the 20th century, one summer day, on the bending shore of the magical, eternal river Yangtze, a woman met a young stranger she falls in love with. But he can’t love her back, and she can’t love him if she would have known why he has come here to find her and what kind of cruel crime the young man has committed… Butterfly  is a modern fairy tale that explores passion beyond all forbidden boundaries and love tested to its limits to defy even death. Taking a stab at sensitive historical, social issues such as the Rape of Nanking, the question arises, what is love? Where is the salvation in all the heartlessness of mankind? Are we able to love, a deed that is so often taken for granted? Perhaps love is neither simple nor always pleasant or even inhuman. In the end the protagonists have to undergo a metamorphosis in order to be reunited again on the bank of the Yangtze river where they met seven decades ago. 


       A shamelessly original work of art that you can read legally outside China 

                                           
       Butterfly is a passionate piece of prose full of unexpected wonderment. Taking us into a stunning world that has been considered impossible before, Julie O’Yang convinces us that the power of human spirit is capable of bringing a change to the long-standing outlook of values and beliefs. 
                                          Ma Jian, author of
Beijing Coma

       Butterfly
is a tour de force, as strong and delicate as a butterfly's wing on rice paper. An intriguingly original glimpse into the human psyche.  
         
                                         Leanne Delehanty, author and visual artist 

     
 Confronting us with its subtitle, Butterfly foregrounds itself as nothing more, nor less, than a novel; allowing, inviting, us to flutter through its tale. The book never lets us forget that writing is
  haunted by echoes of scribere; scratching, tearing. We tear with it as it tears at us—wounding, destroying even, but never devastating. For, amidst everything there is laughter. By never letting facts get in the way of the truth, Julie O’Yang tells us stories. Her gift to us is nothing other than writing itself.

                                       Jeremy Fernando is Jean Baudrillard Fellow at The European Graduate School, and author of Reflections on (T)error, Reading Blindly, The Suicide Bomber; and her gift of  death, and Writing Death.
                                                                           

                                         (Watch the official booktrailer on Youtube)

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Julie O’Yang is a novelist and visual artist based in The Netherlands. Born and brought up in China, she came to Europe in 1990s to study at the University of London. Then she read Japanese Language and Culture at the University of Leiden, Holland, and Tokyo/Nagasaki, Japan. Her short stories, poetry and articles have appeared in magazines and newspapers worldwide.

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    Julie O'Yang is a novelist and visual artist. More at: www.julieoyang.com

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