FaceTime and WhatsApp are indispensable apps these days, thanks in part to the pandemic. Regardless, these apps dissolve the physical distance between people and the audio/visual combination makes the virtual visitation experience credible. Kudos to whoever made it possible for multiple people to connect at the same time.
My ensemble of siblings is situated on 3 different continents and in 3 different time zones; so we usually meet at a time which would not inconvenience any one of us too much. During a recent visit, one of my siblings started to recite a verse from some poetry. That verse was somewhat familiar to the rest of us, yet we couldn't identify the origin readily. Thus the source of the verse became the conversation for the next half hour. The sibling who uttered that poem said it was from the collection of the Three Hundred Tang Poems.
Tang Poems was a subject that each one of us in the group had to study as part of the school curriculum. That was at least half a century ago. The amazing thing was that we were all able to produce our own copy of the Tang Poems and proudly displayed our book in front of the camera and the conversation quickly turned to a bantering of who owns the most "antique" edition of the publication, as if that really mattered. Obviously we all considered the collection of Tang Poems a worthy addition to our library.
Some days later, I was with another clique of overseas friends online and one of them mentioned something about how some of the Chinese hit songs borrowed verses from well known Chinese literature and turned them into part of the lyrics or part of the title. The topic that day centered around a poetry that dealt with the historic Battle of Red Cliffs. I won't bore you with the historical facts. It is easy enough to find it on the internet. I am not a total stranger to this poetry, since the author was Su Dongpo. Su was visiting the Red Cliffs, which evoked in him a sentiment of inopportune times and not earning the respect he deserved.
I decided to do a painting based on Su's writing of "The Red Cliffs Nostalgia" and I would be putting calligraphy on my painting. I will be paring down his poetry into a more manageable length, not only to save space, but to save grace. My grace.
The bane of my existence, and there are two. I wish I could properly play at least one musical instrument; I wish I have good brush calligraphy.
I had labored over Su Dongpo's calligraphy during my course of learning Chinese Brush. One that I studied and emulated extensively was his Cold Food Festival writing. Since it was learning by rote for me, I never internalized the calligraphy. In other words, I have horrible handwriting, in the absence of the Te. In order not to "ruin" my painting, I decided to do my calligraphy first. I won't start my painting process until I deem my calligraphy "presentable". That is how much I dread my own calligraphy.
I started my practicing routine.
The gist of the pared down writing is:
"The incessant waves urge the river eastward, taking with them all the accomplished people. Such picturesque landscape, how much history have you witnessed. Perhaps I am being too sentimental, reminiscing the days gone by. Life is but a dream; allow me to scatter my wine, ode to the river and the moon."
I finally took a deep breath, threw my hands up and settled on this edition:
I find such resonance in these words, hence the motivation for my new painting.
