Sad Spring Serenade (from the past)

I wrote this song years ago after a very painful phone call that was the start of a cracking friendship.

Recently I wrote to my old friend that I feel our relationship is like a beautiful book. A heavy one, beveled and enrobed of a velvet cover. The book is closed, and I wish to revisit it once in a while, but it a lot of effort and quite some sadness to be able to find a good place for it in my library. So I don’t really often want to open the book again to casually go through it’s pages. It’s save and well archived where it is now.

Pieces

After a long time not

really talking

Realising there is Nothing to say

You broke my heart in one day

Oh yes you did,

Oh yes you did

Outburst on the telephoneNever thought I would feel Like this alone

On an afternoon, on a fridayDon’t know what to say

You did the worst you could doNever expected that from youBut humans are weird species

They can break your heart in pieces

— lyrics & music by YLÏAM (2020)

Yin Wood Snake

op adem komen

notebook 11-12/2024

nai-nai

The Weather

I accidentally deleted the CORRECT version of this blogpost and I can’t get it bacK. So this is a not corrected version. No time right now to work on it again to have it as I wanted. But here is something — I have to learn to let go anyways, and try to let go of perfectionist tendencies.






It snowed today. And it reminded me of something I once read: that people in Belgium like to bond over their malheurs* and the weather.

(*their unfortune)

Collective nagging, just like gossip, a social necessity to bond, in order to process life ~ will transcend language and any culture barriers here. And I really felt that today, on my way

to work.

All crammed in a damped tramway, one person kept standing in the middle of the carrier instead of moving through; a child kept weeping out loud; I bumped into people with my bike; we were pushed, too hot inside, to close to each other, yet we all nodded, smiled, acknowledging, and incredibly patient with each other — despite our annoyances to one another.
Those little moments make me love it here.

“Snow is falling. How could we be mad at eachother? ”

Right after the doors closed, the new passengers have found their seat, their bar to hold, the balance on their feet, we look outside the window.

Some nostalgic, remembering how snow used to be only a joy, and never nuisance.

Partly impatient for it to melt, partly hoping it stays - until the working day is over, at least.

“Be careful biking outisde!” these old ladies shouted at me.
“It’s very slippery!”
“I will!”, I shouted while going out.
“Have a good day!”
“You too!”

On my bike, on my way somewhere else. I see a woman stepping out of a black car, close to Bruxelles Nord. High heels, morning, ponytail high up. The car drives away, she walks in her own scene. I capture the image in my head, this is how it translates in a drawing.

Coming home, energized form the cold, I fall asleep uncontrollably.

Today and the last weeks, i feel physically and mentally not great. My ADHD flares up, I have no control on what I do. I cannot even physically focus my eyes, the same way a camera wants to sharpen on a detail, but fails.

And I’m not even talking about trying to focus on a book or working on a computer — I am not physically able to focus on the food on my plate as my gaze just wanders into a non-existing horizon.

Despite these moments, I thank nothing less than my self for having the determination to actually quit my addiction to scrolling.

If you have been in loopholes and doomscroll spirals, sometimes days after days, and felt like Instgram was your crack at dawn and night, you know how hard it is to quit.

The fact I didn’t doomscroll for now more than 2 months is, without a joke, my biggest achievement in the past years.

I really used to fall in deep ADHD ravines. I would waste at least 3 days a month simply scrolling. That sounds like a lot now, 3 full 24hours day, spent watching 7 seconds videos of strangers?

Here’s the math:

• Scroll 15min the morning,

• Scroll 15min during your first break at work
• Scroll 5 minutes through out the rest of your work day here and there, adding 25minutes.

• Coming back home after work, scroll 30minutes.
• Scroll 30 minutes before sleeping (often it’s more).

That’s minimum 2 hours a day scrolling.

• 2 hours x 7 days a week = 14hours a week.
14 hours x 4 weeks = 56hours a month.

This equals to 2,33 days.

That’s 2,33 days x 12 (months) =
28 days a year.

That’s a total amount of a full month per year spent on scrolling.

And that’s just a calculation of my Instagram screentime…

I’m saying this because, despite having a new phase of uncontrollable ADHD symptoms, the compulsive dopamine hunt goes into MAKING. ART. And not. Watching. Videos of These Amazon Must Haves For Your Shower Are Scams videos.

After so much years, I am not frozen in my chair for 2 hours of compulsive scrolling and I am incredibly relieved.

Instead of scrolling, I now make art!

Flowers

A day in Paris it was in April I am digging and digging through the layers of my inner body my inner sadness is endless

Pouring dew the tears flowed and I kept digging and digging Soulage, and solace, it just rained The flower perk is full of drops and the sun is barely shining but for me it's shining enough and I forget for 30 minutes what is going on around me

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Home in the one of the many 2 sweaters one of him and one of me I lay them on top of each other to find a bodily remain of his

You know sometimes life stops and goes and it's like a shawty like a melody in your head and your ipod is not on shuffle but it's stuck on repeat.

i Dig and dig and I keep finding, pictures, pictures, pictures, he made so many pictures, I thought he was caring mostly about sound, but there are so many pictures, of what sound needs to exist : pictures of walls for the sound to bounce on and pictures of musicians for sound to be made and pictures of us for the sound to heard

I dig and dig and if I dig deep enough i will find a crust and the crust is what, still whacky and needs to wait.

Flying Squirrel

For the coming year I am following the omen I saw in Taiwan with my friend Gaëlle: a flying squirrel.

I often struggle with the multitudes of ideas and thoughts that start to form like a rhizomatic network in my brain. It goes so extremely fast and I can’t keep up. In a way I believe that it has withhold me from many things as I am always working on a project that never ends. Maybe this blog where I write out the impulsive thought formation will help me find a linearity, although I do believe the the structure of rhizome formation. I want to list the ideas for my art so it’s out there:

• Film my grand mother.

  After loosing my grand-father the importance of recording became even more deeply part of my practice. I have made 2 videos of my grandma in China, and I want to work more with film. I have a lack of confidence as I am not able to properly use words to describe my ideas (like a making a pitch) but I realised I might need to collaborate with others. I want to record her doing her day to day life and interview her about her past.

• Curate a group exhibition Doom, Gloom, Glory & Bloom

This has been in my mind for so long, and I need to do the same: write a pitch, get the funding, make it happen.

• Start to make editions

I was so inspired when I saw the world of self Publishing at the Paris Ass Book Fair. Especially the stand of @possesedplanets which is a collective from the Philippines inspired me in what is possible. I started this website again for that reason, to have a working webshop and blog.

Letting go, finding out...

I now have a LomoHome, which is a sort of photography blog on the Lomography website. On the 3rd of January, I am picked a LomoHom of the day. This serie of pictures are one of my favourite I ever took.

“Maybe this trip is about letting go and finding out...” Traveling to #Taiwan became something else entirely—a journey that stretched beyond its itinerary. It went deeper than I expected. It felt like transformation, though I wasn’t sure into what. But I know at its core, there was friendship: friendship, the love of friends, the love for friends, the missing of friends, the mourning of friendships.

Ye-Ye's archive

I have been working alot in Ye-Ye's archive. I have so much to say about it too. For now I am sharing these video stills of the video I made for his memorial concert in Taiwan. Soon a very exciting project will follow.

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After Years, blogging again

I decided to continue this old website that I left behind years ago. I am still looking for how to show my work, and I think blogging is always on eof my favourite ways. I actually read a lot of blogs about a lot of different topics, and I think it's one of the most charlming resiues of our online presence. So, here it is, the new blog,s tarting on January 1st of 2025. Here a few scans of my half frame Kodak Camera I took in Taiwan.

Sequence #7: Food Alley in Taipei

I scanned the pictures myself and find it hard to find the right way. So I do play around a lot with the contrast and color grading. I love it.

Sequence #8, Around the Corner

Mi

The Temple

Calyptraeid gastropods, a group of sedentary, filter-feeding marine snails, are sequential hermaphrodites that change sex from male to female during their life span (protandry).