The day when it finally dawned on me that my life was now irrevocably and permanently changed was sometime on the end of October when I walked out of the Glasgow School of Art Library on Renfrew Street at 5 in the evening, walked out to a dark sky and an incredibly cold evening.
That night we worked through the night, me and Pui San, delving into the life of Gordon Matta Clark, the short-lived artist of the American 70s that left a momentous impact on the art world, exaggerated no less by the circumstances of his unlikely demise. I filtered in and out of a lack of concentration, a lack of focus, and a general sluggishness in getting work done. I wouldn’t say I believed in the total and absolute power to shape your own destiny, but I believed – wholeheartedly – that good decisions was determined by your desires and that, with ample clarity of your wants and your wishes – whatever you decide would be right, that logic and rationale should serve almost as secondary concerns. Yet as I read about how Gordon fried photographs in oil and smoked every kind of substance to attain a higher artistic consciousness in the almost obsessive passion these people give to their work (and probably accelerated his cancer, the cause of his death) – it seems that worth was important – the worth of your wishes against….. everything else.
On that cold autumn evening, the blustery wind twirled fallen leaves into intricate swirls of patterns all around me and down into Sauchiehall Street; and all of a sudden, as if the imminent coming of short days and long nights triggered a delayed reaction that had so far been elusive –all intrinsic attempts of maintaining a pseudo-Malaysian lifestyle drifted away, not unlike the fallen leaves of summer. Of the past. Gone, like the sudden nonexistence of wind when you step indoors; and in the wholeness of the ensuing silence- a very acute, distilled sense of knowing now is the time. Now is the time to act, to finally act on the plans I have set in motion so many years ago. Yet something is making me hesitate, as if I have thought about it so long, far too long, that it has almost become an ideal, banished forever to the land of make believe, too distant, too hard a target to achieve now. My feet are immobile; stuck in real time and in spirit –awed at the prospect of the promised challenge against both winds; both so alien to me. I shivered, threw my hood up and my head down, stuck my hands deep into my pockets, took a deep breath, and then I took a step. And another……
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