Rediscovering the Past

It's hard for me to put into words what I felt while visiting Colorado this past weekend for the first time in years. Having lived their over twelve years ago, from when I was a very young child, I experienced an influx of long forgotten memories, feelings, and even emotions. 

It felt almost as if I was in my infancy again as we drove through golden canopies of aspen leaves under layers of deep blue hues. The clouds arranged themselves in ways that inspired photographic dialogues of various places I've been but cannot identify. It felt so foreign, but so familiar all at the same time, to the point where I'm not sure if I am even the same person I was back then, but my conscious mind was planted atop the soil of an unknown existence, one that certainly didn't belong to me...

For how could it be possible that I lived in such a scenically beautiful and dynamic setting? An entire lifetime of backdrops that could only be drawn with a palette of grey and brown, with only hints of green and blue hues--that was what defined me. Or so it would seem. So unsettling was the sight of towering mountains surrounding crystal blue lakes, with wispy stalks of grass swaying gently in the foreground breeze, that I could not seem to come to terms with the overwhelming feeling of bittersweet emotion that came over me. 

On the one hand, I lived there. I lived in Colorado, and that defined my childhood from around age 3 to 8. It happened. It might feel like a long time ago, but I can still see vividly in my mind picturesque scenes of myself and my family at various places I only know exist because of these memories. There's no disconnection between that and my current life, only a fluid transition from childhood into adulthood. It was what it was.

Then why does it take so much effort to see it this way? Why does is feel as though there's a HUGE disconnection between my life back then and now? Why does piecing together the memories feel like the pouring through the pages of someone else's autobiography? 

As I sat on the rock near the lake at the base of Pikes Peak, I thought to myself, "He was here, a long time ago." I recalled the place, and the sights and smells were distantly familiar, but it didn't feel like me. At least, not entirely, and not without effort. 

I began to think to myself maybe the reason nothing was ever good enough growing up was because my story began in a place such as Colorado. Granted, I moved around a lot as a young child, but something is quintessential about the ages 3 to 8 in developing the foundation of who you become as a person. Also those ages have a way of creating endless memories that become undefined in your subconscious, almost like "free" memories that we can arrange however we want. Maybe that's the reason I darkly embraced the cold, empty reality I painted for myself while living in the East--because I knew I would return here one day, and continue whatever it was that I started here. 

And that brings up another point. It would seem my life in Colorado is easier to make connections with my most recent life in Texas, if for no other reason than it's simply closer than Pennsylvania. So in a way, its as if I had two lines of existence--one that began, ended for a period of time, and continues in the west, and one that lived in the east. Being here in Texas, thousands of miles away from the place that made me who I am today (Pennsylvania) it is all too easy to detach myself from that life and almost block it out entirely, as if the whole experience had never happened. From that perspective, my life consisted of Colorado, and Texas. It's a very blue and green setting... 

But I can't wipe Pennsylvania from my memories. It means way too much to me, so I cannot lose my grip on it. While Colorado shaped how I grew up, Pennsylvania shaped everything else about me. And now, looking back on it all, the feelings that can only be described as shades of grey, raw emotion and the feeling of being lost, are priceless in the most paradoxical way. It was me trying to figure out who I was and more importantly, why. Why was it that, under a cold, unsaturated sky, was I forced to answer some of the most important questions of one's life. 

And my life in the east wasn't all cold and grey. Moments of light and warmth, of crisp blue skies and cool breezes, often found interesting ways to work themselves into my life in a way that created some of the most valuable memories I will ever have, and wouldn't trade for anything. It was the combination and contrast of these ideas that makes what I like to call a dynamic existence. It is one that everyone should have. When I leave the east for good, it will always hold a special place in my heart, and the good memories will be painful to recall.

 I now believe living in Colorado is what inspired me hours upon hours of drawing and writing alone in my bedroom as a kid growing up in Pennsylvania. It was an unstoppable torrent of pictures and feelings I never quite was able to get a grasp on while I lived in Colorado--for I was too young at the time. But my life in Pennsylvania forced me into a new perspective from which I could read all these images from the outside and begin to make sense of in my own way. 

The result of all this? I can't pretend to understand any of it. But I'm here in Texas as a consequence of all the choices I made in Pennsylvania and I am determined to find what it is my child version was looking for. Visiting Colorado both helped me understand some of my emotion, and managed to confuse me even further by adding back in a whole new layer of images. Its an inexplicable feeling, but one I wouldn't trade for anything, because it keeps me going every day.

More to come on this topic later...

So you want to be an architect?

So you want to be an architect?

As architects we have the power to create the world. To create context. This is the way I have always seen it. We do not simply create buildings, and we certainly do not create "objects" that we place into the world. We create the setting to a story, the backdrop to our everyday lives. It isn't the mass, but the experiences we shape, that we embed into people's memories. 

If our life is a story, then we are the main character. Everyone around us are supporting characters. The places we go are the setting, and the experiences we have are the plot. This is what makes architecture so significant--the role it plays in the setting of our story. 

Do you really understand the power behind this idea? Let me provide a background context which may or may not help understand one architect's way of thinking.

A lot of my desire to be creative stemmed from watching anime as a young child. I grew up one such motion pictures as Studio Ghibli and Makoto Shinkai. Some of the most thought-provoking, intriguing, unexplained yet beautiful imagery I have ever seen. It portrays our life on earth in a harshly realistic, yet childishly playful manner at the same time. It finds the happy moments in the darkness.

When I was five or six, my mother used to sit down with me at our cheaply made electric piano and teach me to play songs I liked. Such was the beginning of my understanding of music composition. Music and architecture are so inexplicably intertwined, probably because they are both elements of the setting: the place, and the soundtrack. Creating music has since been something that is really important to me, as it is one of the main components of creation in general. Learning to create one thing inevitably helps you understand the process of creating something else. 

I can't remember who taught me how to draw, but that was probably the most important step in my path to becoming an architect. I learned through many years of practice how to turn a plain white sheet of paper into an entire imaginary world, becoming so dynamic it feels like half my childhood was spent in a place that never really existed. But it did exist, and drawing was my way of showing that. 

As a kid I was always in quiet contemplation, I wasn't actually in the classroom like all of my peers. In other words, there was a lot of disconnection between my physical and spiritual self. Luckily I was able to grow up with friends that at least partially understood my point of view, otherwise I would have been alone in my thoughts all of the time. I would always spend my time trying to perceive the world in my own way, and to create new worlds based off my perceptions, and my close friends would try hard to understand me, and were intrigued by the work I made. A lot of them wondering, where does all my seemingly endless motivation come from?

The good thing about moving around a lot as a child is that you get many different perspectives on the world in which we live. And the good thing about growing up poor is that you are forced to face life head on. You can't buy your way out of any situation. It develops you as an individual. If you want something, you have to work and save for it, then you begin to understand its value. My father always told me I would be working as soon as I turned fourteen. Did I resent him for that? No, in a way, I was thankful. Firstly, because I knew he was spending all our families earnings just to support myself and my two sisters to give us a somewhat "normal" life. I knew it would be impossible for him to set aside money just for me. But I was also thankful that he cared enough to know that having me work would be a huge step in developing my independence and help me accomplish my goals in the future. 

My parents were always doing little things, that I often did not notice, to ensure that I could follow a comfortable and meaningful life. It takes a while for you to understand what it means for someone to work a physically and mentally taxing job that they hate everyday of their lives just so you don't have to. In a way its almost like they are almost giving up on their own lives to make the most out of their children's. My father was always trying to make sure I knew what I wanted to do with my life, and for that I am eternally grateful. You really need someone as a kid to ask you these questions. It might well be the most important thing anyone ever says to you. 

All of this is important, but this doesn't really answer why I wanted to become an architect, does it? 

It mainly has to do with the whole idea of experiences that I mentioned earlier. When I think back on the most powerful memories I have growing up, the setting was a huge part of them. To be able to create that setting for someone else, to create a quiet backdrop to other people's stories, this is the ultimate creative job for me. 

One time, not too long ago, I had to say goodbye to some people that are very close to me. The extent of that goodbye was unknown to all of us. It was snowing the last night we would see each other, and we decided to go to the new music hall at the local college. We were the only ones in the building, and there was a Steinway piano sitting in the middle of the lobby area. My close friend played a few songs on it, and the sound resonated throughout the building in one of the most beautiful ways I've ever heard a piano played. Describing this experience in words does not really suffice, it was an experience only we will remember and understand. 

It should also be pointed out that the architecture of this new music hall was quite awe-inspiring. In a way, it followed the characteristic of Japanese architecture in only using earthy elements and tones. But the design combined with the experience I had there, combined with the music, made it entirely unforgettable.

Architecture really is the perfect job for someone who thinks like me, because in a way we are extracting ideas out of our own experiences in order to create experiences for others. If you didn't know already, anything you come up with is a composition of memories and imagery from your past--you never create anything that is truly new. I find this fact very perplexing, that even the greatest, most aesthetically innovative buildings were extracted out of the architect's own experiences. But we will never know what. 

--

Hopefully all of this makes some sense and begins to explain one particular mindset of an architect. It is much deeper rooted than what I see in architecture school. And I believe only those that have that deeper motivation to create will really succeed as an architect. So let me finish by asking you once more, do you want to be an architect?

What does it mean to you?

The Spirited Away Train

As an Asian-American child, I grew up on many elements of Asian culture as well. One of these was Japanese Anime, specifically, the many works of director Hiyao Miyazaki. I saw all of his movies as a kid, and they will always have a special place in my childhood. More importantly, the ideas and themes presented by his movies have had a profound influence on my perspective of life, even to this day. I do not go a day in my life without relating something I see back to those movies. There is one particular scene, however, that I will never forget as long as I live, and that is what people refer to as the Train Scene in the movie Spirited Away. This particular segment of the film has a very literal meaning in the story, but contains so much symbolism and allusions to existence and life itself. The combination of the motion picture and the music (by composer Joe Hisaishi) creates the most powerful scene of any film I have ever seen, despite the absence of prominent dialogue or written word.

In Spirited Away, just before the Train Scene, the main character Chihiro embarks on a personal journey to cure her friend, Haku, of his curse. She acquires train tickets to leave the spiritual bathhouse, at which she works, and meet an old woman named Zeniba. The bathhouse is surrounded by a vast, blue ocean, that stretches off into the horizon, and the train tracks lie underwater a few feet, but close enough to the surface to walk on. Chihiro's elder coworker, Lin, takes her to the train station by means of a small rowboat. They arrive at the station, which is simply a light stone platform nearby the underwater tracks, isolated in the calm ocean waters. As Chihiro and her mute spirit companions wait on the platform, a train is seen approaching the platform on the underwater tracks, treading through the water. They are greeted by a silent train attendant who collects their tickets, and the viewers never see his face. More importantly, though, when they board the train, there are silent figures seen everywhere in the various seats. These figures are completely featureless, colorless, and emotionless—they only sit in silence and wait. Chihiro and her companions take a seat amongst these unidentified spirits, completely unfazed by their odd characteristics. The train rides on into the endless waters, passing beautiful but lonely views of distant clouds, small islands with a houses on it, and other train platforms seemingly floating in the eternal abyss, with more anonymous figures on them. Finally, the train arrives at a forested area where Chihiro gets off with her followers; by this time it is night and they were the only ones left on the train.

 

 

Everything about this scene, every little detail, seemingly has a hidden or symbolic meaning. The anonymous figures, the color scheme changing from a light blue and white, to a red and purple, and finally to dark blue and black, and the lack of dialogue combined with the music all play a role in creating the spiritual and philosophical images I believe Hiyao Miyazaki intended to embed in the scene. And I think there are multiple ways to interpret these various aspects of the scene, but after years of contemplating its meaning, I have come up with a few ideas of my own.

The first detail that should be noticed is the vast ocean which surrounds the bathhouse, and the submerged train tracks that traverse its waters. It paints a beautiful picture, but nonetheless creates a deep feeling of loneliness and isolation. Thinking critically about the setting, one cannot help but ask questions such as “why is the bathhouse surrounded by an endless sea?” or “Why are the train tracks underwater? And why do they lead into the empty abyss?” I had always wondered this as a kid, but only now do I see their deeper meanings. The bathhouse represents one's current setting, which, if you really consider it, is all that matters in the grand scope of one's surroundings. All that makes any difference in one's life is where they are at the current time, and the places they know, while everything around it becomes irrelevant and might as well be an ocean. Following this theme, the train tracks are submerged because often the path in one's life is not clear, even though it is unavoidable. It stretched off into the featureless horizon, being the only thing seen to the passengers, because all that matters to us is our own paths in life. Moreover, that is all we ever see. There is so much going on around us, but no matter what, we are always riding on our own train, and everything else becomes meaningless to our existence. The train passes islands and towns floating in this “sea of life” but never does Chihiro depart the train. It is only our own destiny which we can ride to, though we often catch glimpses of alternate realities. These other stations which the train passes represent the choices we make in our own lives, or more significantly, the choices we pass up. In the end, we still follow the destined path laid out before us.

 

 

The anonymous characters that surround Chihiro on the train symbolize our daily encounters with the other people of the world. Their features and characteristics do not even matter, only the fact that they are there. They each follow their own paths, to their own destinations, but we do not even see them because they are not a true part of our reality. Only our loved ones, friends, and other acquaintances have qualities that we recognize and remember. Everyone else merely becomes a part of the scenery. This idea of isolation and anonymity is a very cold, dark view of life, and as a child we do not really see this woven into the context of the film. I remember when I saw Spirited Away for the first time when I was really little, not a part of the train scene bothered me. In a way, it was almost more appropriate to see the figures on the train as lifeless and unmemorable. Perhaps this is the way the world seems to us as children, but we don't really contemplate its meaning. Imagine yourself in a public place, flooded with crowds of people. In the midst of the crowds you see your parents, or maybe your best friend. Your recognition of their presence is unmistakable, but everyone else might as well be just background noise. The sad part is when you realize that all of them are people as well, and you are their background noise.

I cannot help but make another connection in this scene, and that is the gradual change of color. At first, the images are dominated by the light blue of the ocean against the light blue of the skies, and the contrasting white of the clouds. This, being the earliest part of the scene, represents the beginning, or one's childhood. The almost dreamlike perfection and lightness of the colors is how we view life as a child, never seeing the darkness. As the scene progresses, the hues become deeper and darker, which represents the transition into adulthood. Our surroundings become more real, and more harsh, but there is always beauty to reflect on, which is symbolized by the more opaque images in the water. Finally, the train leaves the vast ocean and enters a dark world decorated with trees. This, being the last stop, is the closing of one's life, foreshadowing the dark but unavoidable end that awaits us all.

What is it that director Hiyao Miyazaki intended for people to extract out of this scene? Combined with the music, the imagery used creates one of the most powerful moments in film, but it is hard to put into words exactly why. It provokes so much emotion, much of it discomforting, but it also displays so much truth. For me, what this scene means to teach us is that there is no point in desperately trying to understand our own fate. The train will guide us, and there is no promise of it being an easy journey, but we will experience colors of all kinds along the way. Not everything will just be background noise, as we are not alone on the train. Most importantly, we will eventually reach our destinations, and the ocean of uncertainty around us will become the trees that protect us, and those by our side.