The memory picked is the certain day that we were lifted from lockdown for the pandemic. On that day, I was doing my final revision for my college entrance exams as usual, but countless notifications from the phone of the neighborhood group chat let me know the excellent news.
I watched the clock closely with my parents to see the minutes and seconds turn slowly until the moment when the lockdown was completely lifted. We took off our masks and threw them in the trash bin, opened the door, and walked out to breathe the fresh outdoor air we hadn’t encountered in a long time. I walked through the neighborhood with no destination in mind, perhaps just wanting to take a walk in this world of regained freedom. I heard children laughing and playing basketball, grannies gossiping in Shanghainese, bikes and cars driving out, and my feet stepping over fallen leaves on the side of the road, just letting go of my mind and enjoying the moment.
Suddenly someone let out a cough and all the beautiful sounds came to a screeching halt again. Everyone seemed to hold their breath, looked to the same place, walked or ran back to their homes, and shut their doors again.
To be honest, I have two ideas on the topic of memory soundscape, and up to now, I am still exploring and experimenting with sound collections to see which one could be more practical for this sound project.
I have an alternative topic to record a common memory of my childhood. When I was a kid and everyone was learning to sing and dance and play sports, the extracurricular hobby I was learning was calligraphy, which was a quiet activity.
Days as a child, I sat in my room, hearing the sounds of children playing outside, facing my ink and paper. With the background music of my teacher’s favorite guzheng with the sound of some Buddhist meditative singing bowls, I began to grind my inkstick, listening to the sound of the ink grinding over the ink stone, and then proceeded to wash the brush, lay out the paper, press the paper with a paperweight, dip the ink, and write. I slowly calmed down with my breathing, practicing writing to this rhythm, listening to the sound of the wind blowing out of the old electric fan, and just getting more and more meditative about these writings. The end of the story is just uneventful, our teacher’s wife cooked lunch in the inner kitchen and called us to get in and eat, and we put down our pens and ran in. What I want to show is that a quiet art form like calligraphy has its own subtle voice, and also the soul that we have when writing
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