Hning's Formspring answers http://www.formspring.me/Hning http://www.formspring.me 60 http://www.formspring.me/Hning/q/363661673979996106 http://www.formspring.me/Hning/q/363661673979996106 Sat, 25 Aug 2012 08:21:39 -0400 Hning http://www.formspring.me/Hning/q/363660634136538144 http://www.formspring.me/Hning/q/363660634136538144 Sat, 25 Aug 2012 08:17:31 -0400 Hning http://www.formspring.me/Hning/q/363659354534072641 http://www.formspring.me/Hning/q/363659354534072641 Sat, 25 Aug 2012 08:12:26 -0400 Hning Or maybe it's a psychotic kind of apocalypse surrounding water. We bathe too much, drink too little, even Lady Macbeth pities our hypochondria.

Sorry for the lack of wit, my fingers are rusty, my gears are cool. This was my first paragraph, this was my first writing exercise of the day. And under your watch. Oh the lamentations!]]> http://www.formspring.me/Hning/q/363658485914695110 http://www.formspring.me/Hning/q/363658485914695110 Sat, 25 Aug 2012 08:08:59 -0400 Hning http://www.formspring.me/Hning/q/337025634989533870 http://www.formspring.me/Hning/q/337025634989533870 Tue, 12 Jun 2012 20:19:33 -0400 Hning http://www.formspring.me/Hning/q/337025135963817812 http://www.formspring.me/Hning/q/337025135963817812 Tue, 12 Jun 2012 20:17:33 -0400 Hning رجل يدري ويدري أنه يدري فذلك عالم فاتبعوه،
ورجل يدري ولا يدري أنه يدري فذلك نائم فأيقظوه،
ورجل لا يدري ويدري انها لا يدري فذلك مسترشد فأرشدوه،
ورجل لا يدري أنه لا يدري فذلك جاهل فارفضوه.
― أبو حامد الغزالي, إحياء علوم الدين

See, it's not about how you feel. It's about what are you going to do about it?]]> http://www.formspring.me/Hning/q/317963040790158682 http://www.formspring.me/Hning/q/317963040790158682 Sat, 21 Apr 2012 05:51:36 -0400 Hning http://www.formspring.me/Hning/q/315337572958077125 http://www.formspring.me/Hning/q/315337572958077125 Fri, 13 Apr 2012 23:58:55 -0400 Hning
Between the Primordial Goddess Gaia and her brother Chronos, Lou, change is nothing but a cliche.]]> http://www.formspring.me/Hning/q/315334029257738249 http://www.formspring.me/Hning/q/315334029257738249 Fri, 13 Apr 2012 23:44:51 -0400 Hning http://www.formspring.me/Hning/q/315329350889121970 http://www.formspring.me/Hning/q/315329350889121970 Fri, 13 Apr 2012 23:26:15 -0400 Hning
I can tell you, however, how we felt when we saw your drawings. How, tired and deflated from daily bullshit as we were, your work touched us with hope.

"Look, he knows how it feels. We aren't alone in this lonesome bullshit against the world. If he can make something beautiful out of his life, so can we. We'll be okay. We can make something beautiful too. Or, at least, make it work."

But you won't remember that the next time you work on a new project. Because that is not your job as an artist to gloat about how people respond after seeing your work.

Your job, as the vessel for the muses, is shut up and draw.

You know it, I know it. Nothing could compensate for the misery/pleasure spent on our work. No matter how much praise or insult we get, nothing could take away the quiet and private satisfaction of bringing forth a project from the heart.

Nor discourage us from starting the next. (Except our own vanity and laziness.)

It isn't our job to be the audience's moral police. Our job is to shut up and work. And more time we spend on the work we're meant to do, the sooner we finish. Hence, the sooner and wider our artistic mark will be imprinted in our audience's subconscious.

What else would have been the alternative? Quit drafting? Start a lawsuit against every copyright-abuse? If we choose either, we would be wasting our time in talking instead of working.

I like to think that, once it is published for all to see and judge and abuse, my work is no longer mine. I lose my inspirational rights the moment it inspires someone else. I can't take it back. I can't change it. It's done.

And, I think, that is the only way I can restart the creative process again. By letting go.

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I'm a mouthful, Lou. I know. I work your questions like I want my answers to work for me, too.
And I'm one to talk. The inconsistent blogger. Pah.
But I'm grateful for your questions. And your work about social cages freed me. True story.]]> http://www.formspring.me/Hning/q/315325427784625345 http://www.formspring.me/Hning/q/315325427784625345 Fri, 13 Apr 2012 23:10:40 -0400 Hning (Image source: http://bit.ly/HEf0gI)]]> http://www.formspring.me/Hning/q/311440848539617015 http://www.formspring.me/Hning/q/311440848539617015 Tue, 03 Apr 2012 05:54:44 -0400 Hning http://www.formspring.me/Hning/q/311432135531562569 http://www.formspring.me/Hning/q/311432135531562569 Tue, 03 Apr 2012 05:20:07 -0400 Hning
And I wondered out loud, "How could he do that every day?"

The Timekeeper, who is never idle and whose mind is never vacant even in his sleep, said, "With a lot of practice."

And the Timekeeper, through fractal images in Spartan but loaded sentences told me of the old man's life story. "His wife was the breadwinner. He was a creditor. He never really worked. He never did anything in his life."

If I ever had a TV show, I'd like to s̶t̶r̶a̶n̶g̶l̶e̶ ̶h̶i̶m̶ ̶b̶y̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶n̶e̶c̶k interview him. "How could he have done that to himself? What has he done with his youth? How could he?! How dare he?! When so many of our best and most passionate mates have fought and lost so hard a battle to Live and Express and Become."

I'm too j̶u̶d̶g̶m̶e̶n̶t̶a̶l̶ shy to be on TV.

Though I refuse to let that vacant old man pass through my life unmarked, and demand to learn something from him, if only to soothe my own existential fears, in my defensive "I would have", in a story retold.]]> http://www.formspring.me/Hning/q/311354639381439448 http://www.formspring.me/Hning/q/311354639381439448 Tue, 03 Apr 2012 00:12:10 -0400 Hning
And he gave me a face I hadn't seen since I beat him at multiplication tables when I was 13 and he was 9 years old.]]> http://www.formspring.me/Hning/q/311019562839578191 http://www.formspring.me/Hning/q/311019562839578191 Mon, 02 Apr 2012 02:00:42 -0400 Hning
The new family member was in Ade's room, and he's a night person. The Timekeeper was in my room, and he's the goddamn-too-early-even-for-roosters kind of person. I swung heavily between both rooms; and my limbs are marked with bed corners and slipped footsteps. And the long cough that followed us all the way to Jatibarang, marked the days and nights that I kept vigil and served and amused that I stayed awake that long without a single line of speed.]]> http://www.formspring.me/Hning/q/311017073708901767 http://www.formspring.me/Hning/q/311017073708901767 Mon, 02 Apr 2012 01:50:48 -0400 Hning
When a few words caught fire on paper, I tweeted it and that tweet hungered for space so I blogged it and then the hush fell again until something nudged me to reach for paper again.

By the time my contact lenses were so dry that I couldn't keep my eyelids open, by the time my butt was literally numb with dull ache, and my knuckles at a perpetual curve, it was nearly 3 AM.

Yet the wee hours of dawn was thick with the state of unsaid, still.]]> http://www.formspring.me/Hning/q/311014839189249844 http://www.formspring.me/Hning/q/311014839189249844 Mon, 02 Apr 2012 01:41:55 -0400 Hning http://www.formspring.me/Hning/q/311012075885309371 http://www.formspring.me/Hning/q/311012075885309371 Mon, 02 Apr 2012 01:30:57 -0400 Hning http://www.formspring.me/Hning/q/310994019700187476 http://www.formspring.me/Hning/q/310994019700187476 Mon, 02 Apr 2012 00:19:12 -0400 Hning http://www.formspring.me/Hning/q/289448139734122840 http://www.formspring.me/Hning/q/289448139734122840 Thu, 02 Feb 2012 12:23:34 -0500 Hning