-02.13.2024-
As I said in the last post, I'm here to fulfill my words. Given that the application season is already over, at least on my side, I suppose posting it here should do no harm; other than the CA version that I submitted to colleges, I've also included my first draft as follows. It still surprises me today that I managed to cut those chunks down and got really satisfied with my PS.
Prompt: Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.
CA Version:
Call to Adventure
Tens of hours had passed, and my Common App writing section continued gaping blankly at me. My overwrought mind wondered if fitting myself into 650 words was a mission impossible—the idea of being definitively defined by a “final draft” and never being fully understood filled me with agony.
Threshold: Sudden Exposure
“Your biggest obstacle to poetry is by far your biggest motivation for poetry—to represent yourself,” a teacher once said bluntly. I was startled. I had believed I had successfully disguised “me” by avoiding the use of “I” in my writing, but had still ended up being peeled down. Exposed, I paused writing to seek the roots of my insecurity with explicit self-expression.
Temptation: “First Contact”
“I’d rather be an art-interested scientist than a science-intrigued artist,” I once declared. This—my rebellion against the monotony of piano training as a six-year-old, followed by the instant removal of the instrument from our home—was perhaps my first attempt to define myself. I had resisted being subject to others’ plans, but the outcome wasn’t as decisive a victory as it had seemed, as I felt I had lost my “rights” to play music in public. Therefore, my first guitar came as a “contraband” concealed under my bed—I claimed pleasure in lonely playing.
Challenge: Capricious Coping
Initially, writing provided a similar safe space to turn inward, but gradually, it became a cure for the desire to express myself. Indeed, I derived great pleasure from poetry’s ambiguity, which allowed me to encode myself in myriad images. Yet, it was also my fear of being misunderstood that prompted this defensive approach—as if by proactively setting obstacles for others, I could justify my slim chances of being deciphered as the result of my own choice. Consequently, my lack of courage, the question of whether words can represent me, and my convoluted coping efforts turned back to bite me, overshadowing my art and voice and even contaminating my pure delight.
Revelation: Fortunate Breakthrough
While my writer self remained hesitant, the musician in me seized the chance to join IB Music upon my teacher’s invitation. I’m grateful for this opportunity, as practicing in a music community breached my loneliness. When I received welcomes from my diligent IB Music classmates, when I organized the school concert, and when the spotlight glared on stage, returning me to moments of acclaim and applause, I started to claim pleasure by communicating through music publicly, and the sense of completeness I’d longed for began to take shape.
Refusal: Risky Relief
While my steel strings now stretch beyond the plain notes into the realm of communication, my insecurity in writing lingered. I even suspected that the euphoric bubble of music, especially the community I was now immersed in, would one day be ruined by the same issues of self-expression that troubled me in writing. Deep down, I’m terrified by the possibility that, eventually, I would lose both the safety gained from hiding myself and the joy of opening up.
Elixir: Soothing Serendipity
This final yet nagging suspicion would never have dissolved had I not come across this mind-blowing music anecdote: It was Chopin himself who removed the sub-title “At The Cemetery,” inspired by Hamlet, from one of his Nocturnes. He liberated the piece from the “author’s intention,” allowing us to name it whatever we want, be it Titanic or Barbie. I realized that I had subconsciously denied others the freedom to interpret my own works.
Freedom to Live
I decided to both embrace the destiny of being misunderstood as an expresser and appreciate the fact that I shouldn’t and cannot be defined. As you can see, I’ve “finalized” this piece—giving myself up to your interpretation still makes me nervous, yet the excitement of reacquainting with myself now prevails. It's me in my words. It's me in the rhymes and guitar strums. Acknowledging that everything happening reflects me, I'm finally at home, complete.
First Draft:
Tenfold hours had passed, and my common app writing section was still left blank; that was the precise moment when I doubted again if I could ever end up fitting myself into 650 words. It’s nothing like pondering upon a particular word choice to form some rhyme at the end of random lines; it’s nothing like phrasing each fancy phase in an article to be articulated; and it’s definitely nothing like striving for statistical figures to support an objective statement. As far as I’m concerned now, it is an issue of Wozhi (Attachment to oneself), which Buddhists refer to as a mistaken belief in the existence of one’s “independent and certain” self, that I refused to understand, despite my family connection with Buddhism, but eventually hinders my way to narrow down my mind.
…
“I’d rather be an art-interested scientist than a science-intrigued artist,” this could be the first memorable time I ever attempted to define myself when confronting my mom against the monotony of piano training as a 6-YO, followed by the instant removal of the piano from my room, and in fact, from our home, ordered by my mother the next morning. Ever since that day of a self-declaimed demarcation between me and music practice, I hadn’t gained the very sense of “rights” to play again, as it was exactly myself who seemingly gave up with decisiveness at the beginning. Therefore, my first guitar was a “contraband” smuggled in, with my pocket money, and concealed underbed, to be played from time to time without being heard when it came to my wading in the still-fascinating art field of sound many years later.
…
I can hardly recall now where I encountered the idea of “a good piece of writing should purposely reduce the presence of the word ‘I’,” but I did place it on the pedestal for centuries since it is also required in a majority of my tangling with English started from the rigidity in computer science and engineering. (No wonder I couldn’t form a PS, hah?) So, it should be a doddle to imagine how startled I was when a teacher of mine said, “Your biggest obstacle to poetry is by far your biggest motivation for poetry – To represent yourself.” By “startled”, I have no intention to deny this fact. On the other hand, it is nevertheless shocking to me as I tried so hard, in my poetry too, to disguise “me” with the absence of “I” but still ended up being pealed down by others. Admitted, though, I stopped writing and began to stare at my lame lines, seeking if there was a justification for my obsession with filling every clearance between words with “me”.
…
Maybe it’s because I knew I had missed the best age to undergo classical training, the mindset of proving to myself that giving up the piano is, even factually wrong, but still “personally right” once gnawed on me. My playing guitar set off as a secretive conduct offered somewhat leeway to this contradicted pursuit: I could not expose what I was doing there, so the desire to enjoy only myself alone and preserve a private pleasure through self-teaching was indeed greatly liberated. Yet I wouldn’t be me if there were not such a small but diligent group of IB music students welcoming me as a transfer student from Physics; I wouldn’t be me if there were not such an opportunity to undertake the responsibility of organizing the school concert as a former MC; and I wouldn’t be me if the spotlight glare reflected by my partner’s white dress on stage were not that much dazzling, incessantly drawing me back to that instance of acclaims and applauds. Ruthlessly, the real practice in the music community breached my crust to exclude me in the excuse of music and washed through my ears with its undeniable nature as a language.
…
If I had to name a reason when I first started writing, a subliminal rebellion may appear on top of the list. It was a time when I relied on writing to overwrite my previous persona of a typical STEM boy, but it gradually ended up as a cure of mine. Expressing oneself demands great courage, but it is the inherent ambiguity of poetry that allows for multiple interpretations to coexist – as long as my intention exists as one of them, I should be very satisfied. It was precisely under this assumption of being “highly unlikely to be fully interpreted, yet still with a faint possibility– statistically speaking”, that I was fascinated by incorporating myself into poetry. I will never debase the rejoicings I gained from doing so, yet my consciousness was forcing me day by day to face the symptom with which the more I encode myself in poetry, the more I become addicted to it; the more addicted I am, the more resentment germinated alongside the happiness. There’s nothing wrong with writing about oneself, I guess, but here, as I stand and realize: my keeping indulging the question of “whether or not these words can represent myself” to proceed has become a sort of poll, shadowing the art itself.
…
Ever since I was so much delighted in the language of music, the complications of language, like in poetry, waged a similar haunt. As the dancing pieces on my steel strings are now beyond pitches made with fingers in their own sequence, but more to communicate with others, I have to once again deal with issues of where I am, what my message is, and if it can be conveyed properly that I used to escape from by immersing myself in music. I had come to a point where two of my weightiest sources of pleasure turned out to be terrifying, challenging my beliefs forever – until some musical anecdotes happened across my world: Whenever Chopin removed the sub-title “At The Cemetery”, suggesting the piece is inspired by Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet, from his Nocturne in G Minor, Op. 15 No. 3, he imbued this piece with genius transcending program music, allowing us to name it whatever Hamlet, Titanic, or Barbie. It could not be even more mind-blowing when I recognized that the very right and freedom to interpret music, and of course, poetry, had been subconsciously forgotten for so long when it came to my own creations – I was so obsessed with “author’s intention”, aka Wozhi. When worlds and problems of words and sounds merged in front of me in this tiny little story, now I genuinely not only admitted but started to embrace the destiny of being misunderstood as an expresser. In hindsight, maybe this common essence of them was exactly the temptation to me initially.
…
So be it. This is the story of me convincing myself and finishing this piece. One of my favorite musicians John Mayor has a line of lyrics saying, “Moving on and getting over are not the same, it seems to me.” I dare not claim I have already gotten over the problems I’m plodding through, but although it’s plodding, I suppose this process of moving on still matters in many manners. In a sense, everything “represents” me. The motivation to write is me; the time taken for letters to lie on a sheet is me; the final word is me; and the interpretations derived by others are nonetheless – me, but none of them suffices. Above all and above all “me”, the message and the art are gaining my favor. I once deplored Oscar Wilder’s statement, “To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim”. But from my perspective now, whenever I could truly forget the question of “me”, aka “conceal the artist”, a decisive breakthrough may arrive to bless me.
P.S. See any similarity between this and the archived About page?
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