關於 living in germany as an american ，我們在網路上蒐集到這些相關的討論、資訊與評價

NOTES ON CHARLOTTESVILLE:
OR, WHY WHITE PEOPLE DO NOT EXIST AS A PEOPLE

I've heard some several buddies, people I know well and care about (most of them not in comment boxes or in public) asking about the moral equivalency between the neo Nazis, white nationalists, and other white ethnostate type supporters and groups like Black Lives Matter, Antifa (short for Antifascists), and other direct action groups.

I'd like to speak to that comparison a bit and then turn to a more important part of it that I worry about. Before I get to that, I should first say that I've said enough about Trump. Honestly, the guy confuses me. He swings from a nihilistic idiot to a idiotic nihilist. His inconsistencies pile so high that you either get lost in them or you use them wholesale to try and make your point. He wins in the time and toll it takes. He also, I think, has found a very particular niche worldview for his newfound politics and is willing to, at the end of the day, embrace ANYONE willing to give him what he wants the most: affection. Never, at least to my memory, have we had a more emotionally needy president. But that's neither here nor there at the moment.

If you look at most social protests and revolutionary movements you will find a basic set of factions that don't change. They tend to spread between non violent oppositions and even less violent moderates, both winged by some type of pragmatists who are not in principle opposed to violence. Different sides will use the radicals of different parts of this division to throw away the entire argument of one side or another, and this is not an even equivalent exchange in the history of US racial tension. But I want to stay away, mostly, from broad historical claims here.

The point I am driving at is evident when we realize that the Civil Rights activists who practiced non violent acts of resistance were often lumped in with Black Panthers, or others not opposed to violence, although the two groups were ideologically fairly different. But I am not willing to say that they were so different as to not be judged as being on roughly the same side of the discussion. After all, the Civil Rights movement was not just the movement for the passage of legislation nor did it belong to the non violence of MLK Jr entirely. This is not historical. If you don't see that the US institution of slavery was a grave moral evil and that the Jim Crow laws that succeeded it were demonic in their formal and informal application, and that, as a result, those determined to end these things were in principle on the side of justice, then you really have no moral compass. Say what you will of the vast differences between MLK Jr and Malcolm X, but it is hard to argue that their social protest was off key in the tonic.

The more popular -- but equally as appropriate -- comparison these days is to Nazi Germany. (Of course, a great deal of the sentiment of the Civil Rights movement was a direct result of the effects that US wars had for those within its ranks who were not white, but that might be slightly off the mark in this case.) There is a bright and clear moral line between the Nazi ideology and its perverse Final Solution and those who sought to oppose it. This line, by the way, finds its way directly into the symbolism and rhetoric of the neo Nazi's at Charlottesville. Not only were there swastikas, there were Nazi crosses and other niche paraphernalia. There were the salutes, yes, but there were other salutations and insider ways of speaking going on. There were also the tiki torches, the modern Pepe Wal-Mart replacement for the burning torch rallies and burning crosses of the KKK. The grand knight of that sick group was standing by. They brought their own military-grade armed militia to protect those who came in homemade riot gear. This was not the making of a peaceful protest or free speech of the sort that we see the Westboro Baptists practice (not that they are emblems of public virtue, far, far from it!).

As I said earlier, if you find yourself unable to distinguish between Nazism in its original form and neo Nazis, white nationalists, and others like them and those who through what ever means they find useful (which one can disagree with in practice while still endorsing in principle) oppose them, then you are morally corrupt. If you can't quite figure out how the math works in this moral calculus, you are morally mindless and incompetent.

Of course, within any opposition to these (supposedly) easy immoral targets one can find many arguments and even passionate disavowals. But there are real moments when these lines are simply drawn and one must take a side. I have in the past even used the language of "alt left" in an entirely different usage, but I regret it deeply, now, seeing its life-cycle. I will not exchange my allergies to the ideological types of identity politics I have long opposed nor will my more specific critique of the critics settle. All that fuss gets set aside in these events. If I have to choose whether to stand next to a neo Nazi or Antifa, I'll choose the latter on pain of eternal damnation. To those who say you don't have to choose, that risk is one I am not willing to make. I would rather be a black panther than a lynch mob, as much as my truer sympathies lie somewhere else. Despite all my oppositions to modern warfare, I would pick up arms against the Nazis long before I'd "peacefully" cheer on their side. I think most people feel this way.

But something remains and this is what I worry about and even dread most: we are not fighting Nazis or lynch mobs. Most people would never go to march in Charlottesville. And even when you talk to many of the white nationalists they will say something along the lines of "I'm not racist." To them, their present politics is no longer that of the slaver or the KKK. They don't wear hoods and they don't want to own people as property anymore, it seems. They hate the Jewish people for reasons I am still not able to process in my mind, but their argument is more separatist than colonial -- so they claim.

They seem to think that the USA was founded by *their* ethnic ancestors, who hailed from Europe, gathered together in this ancient race called "White" that has recently, especially after the activism surrounding police brutality against African Americans, fallen into a disrepute that is sending the world into a globalist terror to come, in the biggest of the big governments.

Now, these conspiracy theories do not need to be true or believed to find where they hit a live nerve in a lot of people. Some people do ask why white people cannot have rallies for themselves without longing for ethic purity. Some people do think that white folks today are being washed away through interracial marriage, but many more who don't mind interracial romance still worry that white people are on the losing end of public sentiment. Lots of people who try to counter this tend to make it worse by appealing to gotcha replies about privilege or other things. I tend to find that too complex.

I recently commented to one of my friends that I don't think of myself as having very many "white" friends. Some of you might balk since many extremely intimate people in my life are, supposedly, white. And of course if we use one way of thinking about what "white" is, that is true. On the same logic, I would be, in certain real scenarios, white as well. But what I meant when I wrote to my friend was that I see my friends of European descent as from where they are. Those who don't know where they are from share with me a genealogical confusion that I can also understand.

Maybe this weirdness is partly because, on the vulgar ethnic analysis I am used to, I am neither white nor Black. And, of course, as many Africans who are neither black nor American will remind you, things become quite complex depending on what rules we are using to count the deck.

My point is this, and if you read nothing else, please read this: There is no such thing as "white people" in history. Most folks who use the expression were not allowed to use it only a few decades ago. The white supremacy of the KKK of old hated Blacks, yes, but also Mexicans, and Catholics, and Jews (of course), and atheists, and more. Depending on how you see it, whiteness was either more or less ecumenical, but just as ideologically religious.

Let me say it again: There will never be a "white ethnostate" based on European culture because the history of Europe is covered in ethnic feuds and wars. If you've never heard of a guy named Napoleon, check him out. I'm being serious. If you think of yourself as being "white" in some serious ancestral way, you're not. You are wearing a name tag your family was GIVEN at some point but never had by its own right. There are no white people in this familial sense. (Settle down critical race theorists, I am well aware of the whiteness that is real, too, but this ain't it.) There is no such thing as a white European culture or of a white heritage in that sense at all.

Again and again: The most scandalously false part of the neo Nazi mentality is as old as its previous, original half baked idea in Hitler's weak mind. The concept of a master race doesn't work for mastery of people nor does it work for figuring out who you really are. We come from places with names and languages and peoples and legacies that are concrete. Some of us lost a lot of memory at the hands of another, and others lost through the same hands. Today we tend to think that the ancestors of slaves, or indigenous peoples, or mixed-up mestizos are the ones who lack a strong identity and the rest have theirs in bold font. Not true. From your family to your soul, you don't really know who you are if you are using ideological pet words to hang the hat of your self.

I'm not a real Mexican and I'm not a real American -- and I'm no Canadian, either. My father was an orphan, so I've taken his bloodless name as my own, a Portuguese word by etymology. I of course will pass as a white guy at a Black family reunion, just as I passed as an indigenous guy today on the pier (until I produced a fishing license instead of a status card), just as I passed as an Iranian at a birthday party last week, and so on. But the real facts of who I am don't work in the abstract.

This is why if you want to find a better substitute for whiteness find a Greek Festival or an Irish Pub or a German Beer Garden or a French Restaurant. This is food and drink, and it is a set of multicultural cliches, but enjoy an Italian family dinner and tell me there is nothing about who someone is at stake there. The point is that the real identity we can and do celebrate is everywhere and it is not necessarily riddled with guilt, even if sometimes it could use some (or far less). None of it calls itself "white." None. If you are using "white" as your only name tag, then I am sorry to say that you've been fooling yourself. You don't have a people by that name. There is no such thing. Your great-great-great grandmother would mostly likely not answer to "white."

Personal history quickly becomes social, national, and regional histories and we find ourselves, again, at Charlottesville. All I can say for now about it, to my dear and beloved friends who I suspect think that they are "white," is this: We cannot have white rallies because there is no such thing as a "white" people. Black Lives Matter is not a movement for everyone who is of one dark color in the world -- it is about the US experience for those living within the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow over the past three years (some Black activist groups are critical of this aspect of BLM, by the way). If you want a "white" identity, then look to the folk expressions of it that we have and should treasure like music, food, and regional folk ways of being. Poetry, dance, dialect, accent, story. These are not safe or sanitary places -- I tend to think this story of a "white people" got made up there, too -- but they also don't pretend like people are any more or less related than they really are.

Donald Trump is a German-American man, not a white man. His whiteness is an entirely different issue that I am disinterested in getting into right now. If you wonder why white people are seen as bad sometimes, it is largely because of this false assumption: that white people exist as a people when they so manifestly do not.

反對黨中選定候選人楊美盈的一篇介紹自己的英文文章，從這篇文章可以看得出它的架構完全是依魅力故事學的角度來講。（也隱著Joseph Campbell英雄之旅的影子，連這個也講給你們聽，我已經夠慈悲了）。

細節不要問我，除非你是我的學生，就可以在秘密社團討論。

其餘的，若不是我的學生，可以報名 5 月 25 和· 26 日的 《江魔式毒辣NLP》

Entering into Politics - The Story Behind. By Yeo Bee Yin（杨美盈）
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"Why are you involved in politics?" I think this is the question my family members, friends, and many others will ask.

It's a long story. I am writing this story today to make sure that, if ever, I forget what am I in politics for, it will serve as a reminder.

Part I: The Beginning - Seed of Love

It all started in 2001 with my first Fast and Pray for Malaysia. Since then, I started to see Malaysia very differently and began to sow the seed of love for this nation. I remember I was only 18 years old then. Looking back now, I realized, I too, can be a part of the answered prayer. How marvellous.

Part II: Years on Distant Shores

No, I am not a super patriotic person that nothing else matters to me beside Malaysia. Being a 'kampung' girl, I dreamed of going overseas - to study, to work and to see the world.

Part II (a): Eyes Opened

My dream finally came true in my fourth year in UTP. I was offered a 6-month internship placement in BASF world biggest chemical site in Ludwigshafen, Germany. As a chemical engineering student, and being the first student in UTP to get the offer, it was indeed was a great blessing for me.

Internship in Germany was my first taste of international exposure as they take interns from all over the world to Germany. I spent countless of hours with some of these friends here discussing about just about anything under the sun.

In Germany, the church that I attended was Rhein River Baptist Church, which is a church of the American army who are based in Mannheim. I was one of the few non-military church members there. Through my interaction with the American armies, I began to understand what "Democracy", "Liberty" and "Patriotism" really mean.

During my stay in Germany, I also took the opportunity to travel to neighboring countries like France, Italy, Luxembourg and England. It was in these trips that changed my world view about culture, nation, development etc.

Before coming to Europe, as a top student, I thought I knew a lot. After I came here, I realized how little I knew about the world. I began to question why in Malaysia we did not learn a more complete world history, different political systems, different ideologies, arts and culture? Neither have we been taught to think critically and objectively. I began to realize that what we've been taught in the schools have been crafted in such a way that we can be easily manipulated if we are not careful. Our syllabus was (and still is) flawed and politically biased.

I have to admit that before coming to Germany, I was an ardent supporter of Dr Mahathir and his legacy. I read his book, watched his documentary, supported the blind protection of GLCs and race-based affirmative action, thinking that it's true 'patriotism'. (You can see how brain-washed I was then.)

Six months of internship in Germany has completely changed my world view , my eyes began to open, my previous perceptions shattered and I began to see things very differently. There is actually a much BETTER way for Malaysia.

I was 22 years old then.

Part II (b): A Disheartened Young Malaysian

After the internship, I came back to Malaysia to finish my study in UTP and graduated in 2006. Before I finished my study in UTP, I received offer from my dream university, Cambridge University, for a program called MPhil in `Advanced Chemical Engineering. I was so happy! So I started to apply for funding from various organizations. I didn't get any. Although disappointed, I wasn't blaming anybody as I understood that nobody was obliged to fund me. Despite financial difficulties in his business in 2006, my dad agreed to fund my study in Cambridge.

However, I still had one problem. I was bonded to Petronas for 10 years and was supposed to serve my bond after I finished my study in UTP. So I wrote to Petronas again to ask for deferment of service until after I finished my master degree in Cambridge. A few weeks later, I was called to come to the education unit. I really thought everything was gonna to be ok. There, I saw a nice guy, he told me that the program was great and he really wanted to help, but it was in the policy that they couldn't allow any deferment for the bond or I would have to pay up my bond in lump-sump. My dream crashed.

I did not blame Petronas for that, as they were just following the contract and it would be a havoc if every scholar would come and ask for deferment or for more funding. I understood that. However, it was a small incidence in the education unit that made me utterly disappointed with how things work in Malaysia. While waiting at the lounge, I met two returning scholars from Nottingham University, UK. I started to talk to them. After a while, an education unit guy came and met them, I accidentally saw their results - one of them get second class lower and the another one a third class. That blasted my mind. Here I was, with a CGPA of 3.95/4.00 begging only for 1 year of deferment, not even a scholarship, but was denied. Here they were, spent 4 years in the UK fully sponsored and yet graduated with mediocre results.

Am I not as much a Malaysian as them? Being a 23 years old, I was utterly disheartened and disappointed.

Part II (c): The Only Way out

It was just a few days after I came back from Petronas education unit that I received a call from an American oil and gas company informing me that I was recruited. How did I get the job? While searching for scholarships to Cambridge, I casually attended 5 stages of job interviews with this company as my mom advised me to go for job interview experience. The salary would allow me to pay up my Petronas bond in just a few months! Since the offer was great and there was no way that I could attend Cambridge anyway, I decided to take up the job.The company assigned me to Turkmenistan where I spent most of my next 2 years.

I was 24 years old when I left home for Turkmenistan and never thought I'll be back again. My plan was to climb up the corporate ladder and finally settle down in one of the developed countries.

Part II (c): When Money Rules

Being paid in a salary comparable to many general managers here in Malaysia, I managed to settle my bond with Petronas very quickly and saved some for myself. With the traveling allowances from the company, I traveled to many other countries too during the holidays. Life was great, I worked hard, played hard. Because of the good compensation scheme, I did not really think much about what I really want to do in life, my dream or my passion for the country. What I went after were money, bonus and performance. I became terribly self-centered.

I just didn't care anymore.

It was until 9th Mar 2008, when I opened The Star online and saw the news on the political tsunami that I realized how I still love and care about my country. They were just buried very deeply under my frustration and disappointment. How I wished I would be able to contribute to the change no matter how small the contribution was, instead of just seeing it as an outsider.

I began to question, why am I here? Is this really what I want to pursue? Do I do this because there's no more option? Do I do this just because of money? If I were born in the US with many other opportunities, would I still leave my home and do what I am doing now? How many more Malaysians out there left Malaysia because they went for better opportunities, just like myself and many other Malaysians abroad I've met throughout the years?

After more than half a year of consideration, I quit the job just months before my second promotion (when I still could resist the temptation). I wanted to be back to make a change to my nation, so that our next generation do not need to wander around the world for a better future, because the better future IS in Malaysia. I knew that I am a nobody and of me coming back would not help much, but I thought I should just do my part as a Malaysian, to serve our nation, regardless.

However, before I was back for good, I wanted to fulfill my childhood dream first, that was, to study in Cambridge University. I did not need to worry about my finance anymore now as I could afford to pay for everything. So I re-applied and got the admission offer within a month. A double blessing to me was that Cambridge Gates Scholarship, the most prestigious post-graduate scholarship in Cambridge University, also offered me a full scholarship! Everything was paid for including air tickets, living expenses and school fees! I was and always will be grateful for Bill and Merlinda Gates Foundation.

With that, I went to Cambridge University at the age of 27 years old, a long-delayed dream finally came true.

Part II (d): Living Cambridge Dream

My experience in Cambridge continued to make my burden for Malaysia even stronger. Throughout the year, I've met with many brilliant Malaysian students or working adults from top universities in the UK. I usually asked if they will one day be back to Malaysia. For those with JPA or Petronas bond, they said yes because no choice, whereas for those who are not bonded, almost 80% said No or they'll only be back to Malaysia if they can't find a job in UK, Europe or US. Malaysia has become the last resort. For the Gates scholars, it's even more dismal. Out of the 10 who have received the scholarships from 2001 to 2010 (unfortunately none received the scholarship in 2011 and 2012), I am the ONLY 1 who is back.

Where do many of the talented Malaysians go? There are all at the foreign land seeking for better opportunities and a better future. Can we blame them for not coming back? NO, absolutely NOT. Malaysia has just too little to offer them.


Part III: Hello Malaysian Politics


After pursuing my personal dream, as I've promised myself, I was finally back to Malaysia to pursue my dream for the country. Even with a strong burden for the country, it hadn't crossed my mind that I should be in politics, mainly because to me, being a politician was too far-fetch. I had no idea as in where to start, what to do, and which party to join. Also, I had been non-partisan all my life. What I thought I would do to make a change was probably community works and joining NGOs.

Until my company did a project with Democratic Action Party (DAP) in their general election social media campaign that I was exposed to politics first hand. I finally came to realization that if I want to make a good impact in this nation, with the limited things I have, it can only be done effectively through politics.

So joining politics? It was a tough decision, especially this year, only 1 year plus after I started my own business. I am not a person that go after fame and power, why bother to join politics? In addition, I am already 29 years old, isn't that better for me to find a husband and start a family? (God knows, when I was young I wanted to get married at 25!). Why waste time fighting for a job, of which I'll risk losing every 5 years and getting a pay that is not even half of what I used to get? Why bother to play the so called 'dirty politics'? As my mom has so rightly put it, "you can have a decent and comfortable life now, why choose such a hard life?".

However, what my mom did not know, is my love for this nation since I was 18 years old, and my desire to see a better Malaysia.

As I look back my life, by the grace of God, I was blessed with good and free education, MNC job training as well as so many different opportunities of international exposure. What I want to do now is really to be a faithful steward to the gifts of God and use them to bless my fellow Malaysians.

"For everyone to whom much given, of him shall much be required" Luke 12:48

So I've made up my mind to join politics.

Even after I've decided that I should join politics, I wasn't quite sure of which party to join. I was still a non-partisan by then. So I examined through the ideology, history and leadership of different parties, and had finally come to a conclusion that DAP is the best choice for me.

Ideologically, with years of European influences (though a The Economist reader), I have always been a social democrat, so it fits just well. Historically, DAP stood the test of time and never wavered in its principle. Finally, I think I can follow the leadership of DAP without worry because most of the time they make sense to me (unlike the other side) and most importantly, they uphold integrity and righteousness.

One setback of DAP to me was the party ethnicity-mix. It is still made-up of mostly Chinese and I am definitely not very into a race-based party. However, as I was involved in the Roketkini (DAP Malay news portal) Facebook page promotion, I could see the effort of DAP to reach out to Malay population and a genuine intention top down to make DAP a multiracial party. No party is perfect anyway. So I decided to join DAP and believe that through hard-work and time, we can build a true multiracial party together.

Part IV: Hope for the Future

So now, I am in politics and volunteering in DAP. What am I going to do for the next 20-30 years in politics?

Firstly, my heart is to use my gifts to serve the people regardless of income, race and religion. I believe politician is in fact public servant, we should always work towards maximizing the interest of the public.

For the long run, my hope for Malaysia is very simple. I hope that through the hard work of our generation, we'll make sure that Malaysia can be a land of opportunities and equality for our children. I hope that Malaysia can be a land where, no matter how big and what your dreams are, they can be fulfilled here; and no matter what your potential are, they can be reached here. I hope that our children, no matter where they are outside of Malaysia, they will so look forward to come back to Malaysia. I hope for a Malaysia that is free from corruption, united regardless or race and religion as well as competitive in the global economy.

And now, I shall work hard for it. May God bless the works of our hands.

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This is one of the articles summary of: www.yeobeeyin.com

Follow Yeo Bee Yin on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/yeobeeyin

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Nobody’s Fool　　( January 2011 )

Yoshitomo Nara

Do people look to my childhood for sources of my imagery? Back then, the snow-covered fields of the north were about as far away as you could get from the rapid economic growth happening elsewhere. Both my parents worked and my brothers were much older, so the only one home to greet me when I got back from elementary school was a stray cat we’d taken in. Even so, this was the center of my world. In my lonely room, I would twist the radio dial to the American military base station and out blasted rock and roll music. One of history’s first man-made satellites revolved around me up in the night sky. There I was, in touch with the stars and radio waves.

It doesn’t take much imagination to envision how a lonely childhood in such surroundings might give rise to the sensibility in my work. In fact, I also used to believe in this connection. I would close my eyes and conjure childhood scenes, letting my imagination amplify them like the music coming from my speakers.

But now, past the age of fifty and more cool-headed, I’ve begun to wonder how big a role childhood plays in making us who we are as adults. Looking through reproductions of the countless works I’ve made between my late twenties and now, I get the feeling that childhood experiences were merely a catalyst. My art derives less from the self-centered instincts of childhood than from the day-to-day sensory experiences of an adult who has left this realm behind. And, ultimately, taking the big steps pales in importance to the daily need to keep on walking.

While I was in high school, before I had anything to do with art, I worked part-time in a rock café. There I became friends with a graduate student of mathematics who one day started telling me, in layman’s terms, about his major in topology. His explanation made the subject seem less like a branch of mathematics than some fascinating organic philosophy. My understanding is that topology offers you a way to discover the underlying sameness of countless, seemingly disparate, forms. Conversely, it explains why many people, when confronted with apparently identical things, will accept a fake as the genuine article. I later went on to study art, live in Germany, and travel around the world, and the broader perspective I’ve gained has shown me that topology has long been a subtext of my thinking. The more we add complexity, the more we obscure what is truly valuable. Perhaps the reason I began, in the mid-90s, trying to make paintings as simple as possible stems from that introduction to topology gained in my youth.

As a kid listening to U.S. armed-forces radio, I had no idea what the lyrics meant, but I loved the melody and rhythm of the music. In junior high school, my friends and I were already discussing rock and roll like credible music critics, and by the time I started high school, I was hanging out in rock coffee shops and going to live shows. We may have been a small group of social outcasts, but the older kids, who smoked cigarettes and drank, talked to us all night long about movies they’d seen or books they’d read. If the nighttime student quarter had been the school, I’m sure I would have been a straight-A student.

In the 80s, I left my hometown to attend art school, where I was anything but an honors student. There, a model student was one who brought a researcher’s focus to the work at hand. Your bookshelves were stacked with catalogues and reference materials. When you weren’t working away in your studio, you were meeting with like-minded classmates to discuss art past and present, including your own. You were hoping to set new trends in motion. Wholly lacking any grand ambition, I fell well short of this model, with most of my paintings done to satisfy class assignments. I was, however, filling every one of my notebooks, sketchbooks, and scraps of wrapping paper with crazy, graffiti-like drawings.

Looking back on my younger days—Where did where all that sparkling energy go? I used the money from part-time jobs to buy record albums instead of art supplies and catalogues. I went to movies and concerts, hung out with my girlfriend, did funky drawings on paper, and made midnight raids on friends whose boarding-room lights still happened to be on. I spent the passions of my student days outside the school studio. This is not to say I wasn’t envious of the kids who earned the teachers’ praise or who debuted their talents in early exhibitions. Maybe envy is the wrong word. I guess I had the feeling that we were living in separate worlds. Like puffs of cigarette smoke or the rock songs from my speaker, my adolescent energies all vanished in the sky.

Being outside the city and surrounded by rice fields, my art school had no art scene to speak of—I imagined the art world existing in some unknown dimension, like that of TV or the movies. At the time, art could only be discussed in a Western context, and, therefore, seemed unreal. But just as every country kid dreams of life in the big city, this shaky art-school student had visions of the dazzling, far-off realm of contemporary art. Along with this yearning was an equally strong belief that I didn’t deserve admittance to such a world. A typical provincial underachiever!

I did, however, love to draw every day and the scrawled sketches, never shown to anybody, started piling up. Like journal entries reflecting the events of each day, they sometimes intersected memories from the past. My little everyday world became a trigger for the imagination, and I learned to develop and capture the imagery that arose. I was, however, still a long way off from being able to translate those countless images from paper to canvas.

Visions come to us through daydreams and fantasies. Our emotional reaction towards these images makes them real. Listening to my record collection gave me a similar experience. Before the Internet, the precious little information that did exist was to be found in the two or three music magazines available. Most of my records were imported—no liner notes or lyric sheets in Japanese. No matter how much I liked the music, living in a non-English speaking world sadly meant limited access to the meaning of the lyrics. The music came from a land of societal, religious, and subcultural sensibilities apart from my own, where people moved their bodies to it in a different rhythm. But that didn’t stop me from loving it. I never got tired of poring over every inch of the record jackets on my 12-inch vinyl LPs. I took the sounds and verses into my body. Amidst today’s superabundance of information, choosing music is about how best to single out the right album. For me, it was about making the most use of scant information to sharpen my sensibilities, imagination, and conviction. It might be one verse, melody, guitar riff, rhythmic drum beat or bass line, or record jacket that would inspire me and conjure up fresh imagery. Then, with pencil in hand, I would draw these images on paper, one after the other. Beyond good or bad, the pictures had a will of their own, inhabiting the torn pages with freedom and friendliness.

By the time I graduated from university, my painting began to approach the independence of my drawing. As a means for me to represent a world that was mine and mine alone, the paintings may not have been as nimble as the drawings, but I did them without any preliminary sketching. Prizing feelings that arose as I worked, I just kept painting and over-painting until I gained a certain freedom and the sense, though vague at the time, that I had established a singular way of putting images onto canvas. Yet, I hadn’t reached the point where I could declare that I would paint for the rest of my life.

After receiving my undergraduate degree, I entered the graduate school of my university and got a part-time job teaching at an art yobiko—a prep school for students seeking entrance to an art college. As an instructor, training students how to look at and compose things artistically, meant that I also had to learn how to verbalize my thoughts and feelings. This significant growth experience not only allowed me to take stock of my life at the time, but also provided a refreshing opportunity to connect with teenage hearts and minds.

And idealism! Talking to groups of art students, I naturally found myself describing the ideals of an artist. A painful experience for me—I still had no sense of myself as an artist. The more the students showed their affection for me, the more I felt like a failed artist masquerading as a sensei (teacher). After completing my graduate studies, I kept working as a yobiko instructor. And in telling students about the path to becoming an artist, I began to realize that I was still a student myself, with many things yet to learn. I felt that I needed to become a true art student. I decided to study in Germany. The day I left the city where I had long lived, many of my students appeared on the platform to see me off.

Life as a student in Germany was a happy time. I originally intended to go to London, but for economic reasons chose a tuition-free, and, fortunately, academism-free German school. Personal approaches coexisted with conceptual ones, and students tried out a wide range of modes of expression. Technically speaking, we were all students, but each of us brought a creator’s spirit to the fore. The strong wills and opinions of the local students, though, were well in place before they became artists thanks to the German system of early education. As a reticent foreign student from a far-off land, I must have seemed like a mute child. I decided that I would try to make myself understood not through words, but through having people look at my pictures. When winter came and leaden clouds filled the skies, I found myself slipping back to the winters of my childhood. Forgoing attempts to speak in an unknown language, I redoubled my efforts to express myself through visions of my private world. Thinking rather than talking, then illustrating this thought process in drawings and, finally, realizing it in a painting. Instead of defeating you in an argument, I wanted to invite you inside me. Here I was, in a most unexpected place, rediscovering a value that I thought I had lost—I felt that I had finally gained the ability to learn and think, that I had become a student in the truest sense of the word.

But I still wasn’t your typical honors student. My paintings clearly didn’t look like contemporary art, and nobody would say my images fit in the context of European painting. They did, however, catch the gaze of dealers who, with their antennae out for young artists, saw my paintings as new objects that belonged less to the singular world of art and more to the realm of everyday life. Several were impressed by the freshness of my art, and before I knew it, I was invited to hold exhibitions in established galleries—a big step into a wider world.

The six years that I spent in Germany after completing my studies and before returning to Japan were golden days, both for me and my work. Every day and every night, I worked tirelessly to fix onto canvas all the visions that welled up in my head. My living space/studio was in a dreary, concrete former factory building on the outskirts of Cologne. It was the center of my world. Late at night, my surroundings were enveloped in darkness, but my studio was brightly lit. The songs of folk poets flowed out of my speakers. In that place, standing in front of the canvas sometimes felt like traveling on a solitary voyage in outer space—a lonely little spacecraft floating in the darkness of the void. My spaceship could go anywhere in this fantasy while I was painting, even to the edge of the universe.

Suddenly one day, I was flung outside—my spaceship was to be scrapped. My little vehicle turned back into an old concrete building, one that was slated for destruction because it was falling apart. Having lost the spaceship that had accompanied me on my lonely travels, and lacking the energy to look for a new studio, I immediately decided that I might as well go back to my homeland. It was painful and sad to leave the country where I had lived for twelve years and the handful of people I could call friends. But I had lost my ship. The only place I thought to land was my mother country, where long ago those teenagers had waved me goodbye and, in retrospect, whose letters to me while I was in Germany were a valuable source of fuel.

After my long space flight, I returned to Japan with the strange sense of having made a full orbit around the planet. The new studio was a little warehouse on the outskirts of Tokyo, in an area dotted with rice fields and small factories. When the wind blew, swirls of dust slipped in through the cracks, and water leaked down the walls in heavy rains. In my dilapidated warehouse, only one sheet of corrugated metal separated me from the summer heat and winter cold. Despite the funky environment, I was somehow able to keep in midnight contact with the cosmos—the beings I had drawn and painted in Germany began to mature. The emotional quality of the earlier work gave way to a new sense of composure. I worked at refining the former impulsiveness of the drawings and the monochromatic, almost reverent, backgrounds of the paintings. In my pursuit of fresh imagery, I switched from idle experimentation to a more workmanlike approach towards capturing what I saw beyond the canvas.

Children and animals—what simple motifs! Appearing on neat canvases or in ephemeral drawings, these figures are easy on the viewers’ eyes. Occasionally, they shake off my intentions and leap to the feet of their audience, never to return. Because my motifs are accessible, they are often only understood on a superficial level. Sometimes art that results from a long process of development receives only shallow general acceptance, and those who should be interpreting it fail to do so, either through a lack of knowledge or insufficient powers of expression. Take, for example, the music of a specific era. People who lived during this era will naturally appreciate the music that was then popular. Few of these listeners, however, will know, let alone value, the music produced by minor labels, by introspective musicians working under the radar, because it’s music that’s made in answer to an individual’s desire, not the desires of the times. In this way, people who say that “Nara loves rock,” or “Nara loves punk” should see my album collection. Of four thousand records there are probably fewer than fifty punk albums. I do have a lot of 60s and 70s rock and roll, but most of my music is from little labels that never saw commercial success—traditional roots music by black musicians and white musicians, and contemplative folk. The spirit of any era gives birth to trends and fashions as well as their opposite: countless introspective individual worlds. A simultaneous embrace of both has cultivated my sensibility and way of thinking. My artwork is merely the tip of the iceberg that is my self. But if you analyzed the DNA from this tip, you would probably discover a new way of looking at my art. My viewers become a true audience when they take what I’ve made and make it their own. That’s the moment the works gain their freedom, even from their maker.

After contemplative folk singers taught me about deep empathy, the punk rockers schooled me in explosive expression.

I was born on this star, and I’m still breathing. Since childhood, I’ve been a jumble of things learned and experienced and memories that can’t be forgotten. Their involuntary locomotion is my inspiration. I don’t express in words the contents of my work. I’ll only tell you my history. The countless stories living inside my work would become mere fabrications the moment I put them into words. Instead, I use my pencil to turn them into pictures. Standing before the dark abyss, here’s hoping my spaceship launches safely tonight….

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這是一封關於台灣參加WHO給世界衛生組織的公開信. 為什麼WHO跟WHA需要台灣?
過去幾天看過越來越多台灣的公眾人物在叫WHO讓台灣參加. 在現在新冠狀病毒的疫情狀況中我看過阿滴英文跟吳鳳的影片後我也覺得我要試試看自己試試看.

This is an open letter to the World Health Organization about including Taiwan as a member or observer. Why should Taiwan be included in the WHO and WHA?

Over the past few days, more and more figures in Taiwan such as 阿滴英文 Ray Du and 吳鳳 Rifat have been stepping out as proponents of the WHO considering inclusion of Taiwan into the world health organization amid the threat of the 2019 novel coronavirus epidemic. Seeing these pleas has motivated me to do my part.

Dear WHO,
I’m Brian. An American citizen who spent a good portion of my childhood living abroad in St. Kitts, and have been living and working in Taiwan for the past 10 years.

As an American citizen and having lived in St. Kitts and Taiwan, I’ve seen and experienced a wide range of medical facilities, practices, and benefits.

In Taiwan, I’ve without a doubt experienced the best quality of healthcare out of those three places.

Due to the unique history of Taiwan, it has been excluded from participating in the WHO. However, over the past months and especially in the past weeks since the seriousness of this 2019-nCoV outbreak have come to be realized, many leaders and people of influence from around the globe including the USA, Japan, Canada, Germany, Australia and others.

I have faith in Taiwan’s ability to aid in the battle against this new coronavirus, not only because of my knowledge of the affordable healthcare that’s available to all here, but also because the technology and procedures here are extremely modernized.

Taiwan has a highly skilled force of researchers, physicians, and medical professionals who could all be great assets in the worldwide fight to control this outbreak and minimize casualties.

The experience Taiwan has accumulated in the past while dealing with pandemics such as swine flu, mers, and sars have allowed professionals to learn the necessary skills and precautions to take to help thwart these types of outbreaks, and as a member of the who and wha, the skills of these amazing people could help not just in a local level, but on a global scale to contribute to the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible standard of health.

#coronavirus