Declamation by William Huang

Crossings: The EWF Podcast

Declamation The writing of an elegy The passing of a world within the mind. What could the new world mean to you? infinite, inexhaustible, strange, untamed. It struggles against daily the constraints of what is already declared real. It struggles against daily the tepid enoughness. It speaks diminishing languages in an enchanted way, the languages of play, the languages of imagination, pleasure and dedication growing its power within a new rhythm. Its enemy is sameness. Boredom, disillusionment. Alienation. Its enemy is sterility, it wants what is waved away and declared as nothing: no art without work, no work without employment, no employment without a pledge of loyalty. Loyalty to being hardworking, loyalty to your society, which tells you there is no education without usefulness. no usefulness without productivity. no productivity without guilt. no day goes by without the guilt of wanting to do more. there’s always self improvement, you can always be better, because what you bring to life itself is not enough, or so they say. you need more than 3 years for an entry level role. you need to work three times as hard as the next person who is trying to monetise three of their hobbies. But this new world calls to me too, and tells me something I feel is true: time that needs to be invested is robbed of its timely quality. and leisurely respite is just a break from the beating. That old world has a range of plastic medals - One for career, one for family, and one for influence and mastery these resemble premade products from a factory. I hear that new world as the elegy draws to a close. I hear that a person’s spirit can be the source of a revolution. A desire, an adventure, an openness and fluidity. Suggestion, intoxication, whimsy: Surrealism, the mind turning to reveal its other side: the influence of intoxicating dreams inspiring me to declaim that what is possible is wider than what is real. And what is real is The writing of this declamation That rouses the world within the mind. This world begins through enchantment, dark sea in the making, swelling and flooding and flooding.