New York Chinese Opera Society Inc. – “As a foreigner” 1 – Chinese calligraphy ancient form
my baby steps on learning writing ancient characters
When you have not been able to find anything else more complex in writing to satisfy yourself.
It is said ” write” calligraphy, when in my opinion it is truly “draw ” it, or at the very least ” design “it.
Similarly ‘we’ had getting use labeling ourselves as ‘Westerners’ – and not only versa ‘Asians’ – while more accurately, they have been calling us for 1000 of years ‘foreigners’. Which it exactly what we are, even so we never wanted to accept this fact. As it is pretty obvious for me, as soon as I try to draw the very first Chinese character – it does become all ‘foreign’ to me… And I can sense it is going to take a very long time of serious concentration before it will feel less puzzled by it… and than again it would be only a start…
Being ‘foreign[er]’, should began by being aware of our own lack of knowleadge [regarding other cultures], it is very humbling, it’s a step … from finally getting a chance of dropping ‘privileged ‘ given to us from where we come from and consequently accepting to learn from scratch, tackling like a child unfamiliar grounds de be ‘discover’…. definitlly not with a Colombus agenda!
Some people remain reluctant embracing other peoples cultures because it is way easier to ‘colonize’ them.
Getting into the game of ‘narrowing’ someone else culture isn’t it by defacto shrinking and suffocating ours?
ink -paper > encre – papier– tinta – papel
Copyright © Raymond Verdaguer 2015
