Death teaches us two lessons. The first is that all things come to an end. The second is that every ending births a beginning, and from this comes the underlying foundations of change. The death of a loved one means the beginning of a different phase of life; the death and decomposition of a plant creates fertile soil for other shades of green. My old blog has come to an end.
But there is one more thing before I can achieve closure for the past, one last toast to the glorious pyre of the past. I will write about 2sides, as promised to the organiser. 2sides, too, has death as metaphor, as as such finds a place here.
In my second-to-last post, I wrote about Elsa Xu and the 2sides project. Over the last weekend, it has come online. It is a multimedia experience, with music, full motion videos, and photographs. It is the story of Elsa Xu, chronicling her onset of bipolar disorder, her struggles with herself, and her personal triumphs. The music, composed by project member/musician Wang Wei Yang, is an intense blend of electronica and postrock that mirrors a mental sea of intranquility.
In cooperation with Audible Hearts and the Singapore Health Promotion Board, 2sides aims to raise awareness of mental disorder, dispel the stigma associated with it, and to call for help and acceptance for people with such disorders. Having worked and interacted with quite a few mentally imbalanced people in my life, I can say without reservation that they need all the help they can get. I hope that more youths will undertake similar initiatives in the future, to aid the needy, the downtrod, and the forgotten. To bring death to the stereotypes, the injustice, the ignorance, that creates and perpetuates such conditions of being.
In 2sides I see the Grim Reaper smiling, a butterfly landing on his bony finger. Look, he whispers, here is the death of the old. Here is the loss of old mindsets, lifestyles, beliefs. And there is rebirth. The onset of bipolar disorder triggered the swing of his scythe, cutting down the old Elsa Xu in hacks and sweeps. She embraced it, found a way to live her new life, and made her music. And thus, this death has died, and her life begins anew.
And so has mine. My old blog is gone, and will not return. The toast is over, the glass smashed. Now comes the coming of the next stage of life.
Followers of this blog may have noted several changes: template, layout, categories, tags, copyleft, even the title. These are parts of an ongoing series of changes I’ve planned for my blog. Other changes are coming, too, such as topics, style, and tone. Unfortunately, these latter changes are taking a lot longer than expected. Some of this had to do with a sudden influx of homework and assignments that I had to sort out as quickly as possible. As for the rest, I’m re-examining my life again. It’s akin to a comprehensive review of my identity, bringing everything that I am under a stark light to organise, change, and discard. This blog is a direct extension of my writing voice, which is a function of my method of expression; as the latter two go under the microscope and the knife, so does the first. I do not see myself updating this blog until all these changes are sorted out. I do not know when this will happen; I only know that it will come, for I will make it so. The next update, I should think, will be the first article of the blog, the first substantive post in this new blog. Until then, back to the magnifier and scythe.