#7: The ever relentless
A response to Favourite Love Songs and the Question Archive
A response to Favourite Love Songs and the Question Archive
As part of the workshop sessions, participants took turns to share their favourite love songs, and by extension, a more intimate and sentimental part of themselves. They were also asked to take part in a role-play exercise (mentioned below) which involved an unusual process of asking questions. These questions have been collated and stored in The Question Archive page.
Do you ever get tired of asking questions? I don't, and neither do love songs. Love songs, like us, ask many questions even if they don't articulate them, or even if they proclaim a singular and certain message. "Why won't you ______ me love?" "How long will this _______ last?" "May I _______ next?" "Are you being serious about _______?", and so forth. With confessions, celebrations, losses, and teases, love songs represent intense emotions. In them we find substitutes for messages and images that we couldn’t express better ourselves, words and tunes that resonate a spectrum of feelings so immensely personal and universal at the same time. I wonder if anyone wholly rejects love songs, because the perpetual demand for their iterations, year after year, fascinates and bothers me. It signals a clear preoccupation with, even an addiction to, an articulation that pervades our understanding and keeping of time. It's as if we subscribe to the same messages and questions over and over.
Like love songs, questions evolve over time, taking on more layers and meanings, sometimes becoming a web of incompatible nuances. Unfortunately we can only learn these complexities by committing to answers, before realizing otherwise. It is also a little cowardly and dull to be risk-averse and live without any belief of an answer. A role-play exercise conducted in session 8 demonstrated how anxious we are to 'get things right'. Participants were asked to identify a person they presently know but want to get to know better. Following that, they were asked to write down 3 questions that they would ask this person. Finally, they were made to role-play as said person being interviewed with the questions they came up with. While I took the chance to give a totally indulgent and whimsical representation of my pen-pal in Hong Kong (because I am used to exercises like this), the participants who managed to understand the activity felt a need to give a ‘correct’ image of the person they were assuming. No one elaborated why this was so, but I surmised it must feel weird to wield another private identity, especially of someone you know. Despite no one else knowing who they are, we feel an obligation to remain faithful to our perception of the person, using a past logic that is internal.
Maybe it is also a little discomforting to be thrown questions (some very personal ones) we would rather ask someone else. Looking at The Question Archive, it's interesting to wonder which questions could be asked earlier or later on in a relationship, and which questions would garner more elaborate or brief responses. These different lengths of answers, in turn, point to varying levels of intimacy and aloofness, of diffusion and honesty, depending on the person and time in question.
Like love songs, questions evolve over time, taking on more layers and meanings, sometimes becoming a web of incompatible nuances. Unfortunately we can only learn these complexities by committing to answers, before realizing otherwise. It is also a little cowardly and dull to be risk-averse and live without any belief of an answer. A role-play exercise conducted in session 8 demonstrated how anxious we are to 'get things right'. Participants were asked to identify a person they presently know but want to get to know better. Following that, they were asked to write down 3 questions that they would ask this person. Finally, they were made to role-play as said person being interviewed with the questions they came up with. While I took the chance to give a totally indulgent and whimsical representation of my pen-pal in Hong Kong (because I am used to exercises like this), the participants who managed to understand the activity felt a need to give a ‘correct’ image of the person they were assuming. No one elaborated why this was so, but I surmised it must feel weird to wield another private identity, especially of someone you know. Despite no one else knowing who they are, we feel an obligation to remain faithful to our perception of the person, using a past logic that is internal.
Maybe it is also a little discomforting to be thrown questions (some very personal ones) we would rather ask someone else. Looking at The Question Archive, it's interesting to wonder which questions could be asked earlier or later on in a relationship, and which questions would garner more elaborate or brief responses. These different lengths of answers, in turn, point to varying levels of intimacy and aloofness, of diffusion and honesty, depending on the person and time in question.
"When I had all the answers, the questions changed." - Paulo Coehlo
Copyright 2015 Ng Xi Jie, Geraldine Kang
Copyright 2015 Ng Xi Jie, Geraldine Kang