This month was my first of being officially middle-aged. People say 59-year-olds are middle aged, but its not as if you see a lot of 118 year-olds wandering around. Here are some of the things I got up to.
Activities
Working on campus helps keep me at the forefront of thinking in multiple academic fields, including Law, social sciences, and biology. It also takes me back to being that age. This month I wrote this essay about ‘The Red Shoes’, which I first watched at age seventeen, and renews itself every time I revisit.
One of my targets for February was to perform four open mics. I hit the target and had a great time while doing so, it turns out pubs can be even better enjoyed when staying sober. I also commissioned a remix of ‘Shut up and Sing’, one of the most requested songs from the third The Kev album:
I also did an interview with Kiss 104.7 FM, which will appear in full in March.
Output
Starting in April, the camera and mic setup on my Monday Mandarin videos will be exponentially better. An example is the recent video essay I made about Mandopop and geopolitics.
This month, my most popular Chinese lesson was this one, which was on the corporate culture of the People’s Republic.
My music YouTube channel is also set to benefit from an improved camera and mic setup. When filling a solitary sober Saturday evening in late February, I tested it out by recording a rendition of Heitor Villa-Lobos’ Prelude No. 1:
Wider World
This month has seen farmers’ protests throughout Europe. In Brussels, farmers launched manure and eggs at police to protest against cheap imports undercutting agriculture. In Wales, thousands of farmers staged a demonstration on the steps of parliament to protest against climate policies that they say will wreck their industry.
In China, I noticed that the more the country modernized, the more it looked down its nose at farming and farmers. For example, there is the slang expression ‘你农民了吧’, which means “you’ve just done a farmer,” translates as something like “don’t be stupid.” 农民 (nóngmín), the word for farmer, more or less means ‘peasant’.
‘The Good Earth’, by China-born Nobel laureate Pearl S Buck is set in China, and near the beginning it contains this passage about the protagonist, who is a farmer:
“Moving together in a perfect rhythm, without a word, hour after hour, he fell into a union which took the pain from his labour. He had no articulate thought of anything; there was only this perfect symphony of movement, of turning this earth of theirs over and over to the sun, this earth which formed their home and fed their bodies and made their gods. The earth lay rich and fell apart lightly under the points of their hoes… Some time, in some age, bodies of men and women had been buried there, houses had stood there, had fallen, and gone back into the earth. So would also their house, some time, return into the earth, their bodies also.”
Modernity is as ignorant of where its food comes from as it is indifferent to where its waste goes. As Jung pointed out, to be ignorant of nature (for example that cabbages thrive in dung) is to be neurotic.
Wow, you've been so creatively busy, in so many diverse ways! I'm in awe of your productivity. And you're a great guitarist. Love 'The Good Earth' passage.