Diary #33 – Mui Wo Beach

MUI WO BEACH, LANTAU ISLAND, HONG KONG, 1989 — Dear diary. Sophomore year. Photography class. Just farting around in an old house by the water on a day trip to Lantau. Sort of subtly dramatic, yet not.

THE HAGUE, 2012 — I wrote yesterday about the sudden realization that when I was in graduate dance school, that the department didn’t so much throw me out, as help me understand that I was more of a performance or new media or installation artist than a traditional dancer. And I wrote that despite how distracted I had been in the graduate dance program at Koninklijk, that — oh yes — as an undergrad at HKAPA, I was a “real” dancer.

hahaha

So, of course, today I dig a little deeper in the time-capsule-of-my-life ephemera / detritus box… and pull this drama out from my glory days as a “real” dancer. This photo isn’t really that unusual, photography students would always wander by the dance school looking for models for their various projects. But this is my own self-portrait for a photography class.

I love the work I do today and don’t really have any complaints, it’s just funny to sift through the detritus of my life and see what felt like a random drunk walk as it was lived, feel like a bright, and purposive, and clear trajectory line now, to the artist I have become.

And which is the bigger illusion? That it was a chaotic, random, drunk walk that somehow wound up here? Or that it was a clear and guided mission, whether I was consciously aware of it at the time or not?

• Diary #23: Mui Wo Beach
• 2009 video diary of shore at Mui Wo Beach by Sillyan
• Mui Wo / Wikipedia