a friend asked for my opinion on her newly purchased bag. i looked at it, examined it, and contemplated for a short while. i eventually came to a conclusion. yes, i think it’s good. it’s nice.

sometimes words come out in such a harsh kind of way, not the originally intended way. it happens frequently and i’m working on this particular communicative tendency of mine at the moment. i can be extremely direct and sometimes it hurts others’ feelings without realising. when the relationship gets pretty hostile i wonder what’s going on, and i find out then that what i have said was translated in a completely different way to my original intentions. but this also means that when i compliment you, you can safely assume that i really do mean it.

anyway, i joked about her “nana-like” taste in fashion, and said that the bag would go very well with all her fashion items. i went to teach after that. while the students were doing their exercises, i sensed a quiet osmosis of thought; on what basis did i come to the conclusion on her bag - rather, on the aesthetic qualtity of her bag - and did i communicate it well with her?

apparently the word “aesthetics,” coined by a.g baumgarten, is derived from the greek “aisthetikos,” which means “of sense perception.” there are generally two ways of approaching aesthetics: philosophy of beauty and that of art. initially the subject mainly remained in other “more established” philosophical realms like ethics, but it became a more autonomous philosophical entity largely thanks to Kant (well, in western society anyway). there are countless theories in the milieu of aesthetics, for which i don’t have a lot of knowledge. one of my previous phd plans was actually on the digital aesthetics of mobile media; before delving into the subject, i promptly changed it to something a lot more manageable and equally interesting though :)

anyway, the way i approached the evaluation of her bag was multifold, simply because it was practically impossible to view it in a completely objective manner. there were a lot of negotiations in my head.

1. i looked at the bag. of course naturally, i examined the quality of its beauty from my point of view. she asked for my opinion, so i didn’t really examined it from her aesthetic point of view (yes, i’m often like this. plus, i’m not a mind reader so it’s impossible for me to comprehend someone’s aesthetic point of view without explicit/implicit in-depth communication on the issue). colours. shape. size. texture… i examined them. i thought the level of its beauty was higher than average.
2. my taste in fashion is pretty different from my friend’s. so of course, if i took the bag into my world of fashion, it would remain in the same spot … for a long time; it’d probably stay nice and clean somewhere in my wardrobe. but now i had to look at it in relation to her fashion style. sometimes she dresses in black - a very recent phenomenon - sometimes in grunge style, but she has a lot of vintage romantic style fashion items, which i think suit her really well and find lovely and beautiful. this bag would go really well with most of her clothes and accessories, i thought.
3. then i also somewhat automatically looked at it from the capitalist perspective to evaluate the “practicality” of the bag as a fashion item. i wasn’t sure how much she had paid for it, but it looked quite unlikely that it would fall apart any time too soon, unless you intentionally try to rip it apart or do something similarly violent to it. and as a fashion item, i thought about its APC: audience, purpose, and context.

• audience: in general, all is good. people would like it or at least wouldn’t have any aversion towards it
• purpose: i asked why she bought it, to which she replied “because i could actually fit everything in it, unlike all my other bags” - ok, not her exact words but something along the line
• context: a portable item that would hold things safely, which could be carried around to various places and events within her current (and potential) personal, cultural, social, and philosophical realms.

i noticed that (1) was definitely the first thing that came to my mind. but in a split second (2) and (3) became deeply inter-related with (1), so it became all too difficult to analyse the process of my approach. mostly fortunately, but not in this case, any thought process seems to be non-linear in its nature. so the conclusion of (1) (in bold) was reached through a multi-faceted exploration involving simultaneous contextualisations at both individual and social levels. so really, it appears that what was purchased is not the product itself, but the concepts and images reified in its contextualisation.

well, in the end, i found out that i’d made her doubt - though very slightly - her fashion style, so i guess the communication part wasn’t carried out very well. nevertheless, my conclusion remains unchanged. i think she should be happy with her purchase; good for her for having chosen that bag. now let’s move on :)

walking into jocelyn’s provisions is absolutely joyful. it feels warm, delightful, calm, yet playful, and genuine. there’s a feeling of wonderful wintery warmth.

it’s undoubtedly the best patisserie in brisbane.

i only discovered jocelyn’s about five years ago, but it’s been around for about ten years now. i used to have this weird aversion for carrot cake - i couldn’t comprehend the concept. what? carrot? cake? together?… sort of thing. plus, every carrot cake i had tried was bad without a single exception. this was instantly fixed by jocelyn.

/magic/

everything’s absolutely beautiful - apart from the muffins. i’m not a huge fan of soft-top muffins (edited: found out that now there’s only one type of muffin, which i haven’t tried yet, so i can’t make any judgements about muffins at this stage - looks good though. i’ll try it next time). my favourite used to be the fruit and nut loaf, which sadly is no longer available. but once again, everything - apart from those muffins, but they’re not bad or anything; i just personally don’t find them as good as the others, that’s all (edited: again for the same reason) - is great.

i highly recommend the almond croissant, savoury pies/tarts, as well as those beautiful looking and tasting cakes. and of course, the absolutely sensational mini strawberry tart, which is only available for a very limited time each year. in fact, so far i’ve only had it three times, and every time it was so unbelievable i almost cried for joy.

more than anything though, the thing i love the most is looking at the faces of my loved ones when they walk into jocelyn’s for the first time. and at their first bite, when their senses start to play inside… i love sharing that moment.

fantastic.

thanks to jocelyn_

Jocelyn’s Provisions
Cnr Dogget & James St
Fortitude Valley
+61 7 3852 3777

// ok. had the muffin today. very nice_ (20060526)

I am leaving today - no more to say
You can find yourself some
hooker if you really need a lay
You can keep your dope and
whisky and your chain-smoker’s cough
And just wallow for eternity in liquor and slot
– youn sun nah 5

i thought i should be a nice sister at least once in my life, so the other night, i cooked fantastic dinner for my sister and took her to youn sun nah 5 at the brisbane powerhouse. i really like the brsibane powerhouse. it doesn’t seem to be attracting as many people as it should, which is a shame, but there’s always something going on. we should make more frequent visits to the powerhouse, brisbanites! :) besides, the food at Watt is pretty nice, and it’s right next to the new farm park, so really, you can easily have some seriously fun multiple sensory experiences at any time of the day/night.

the concert turned out to be a very interesting one. youn sun nah 5 consists of four men and one female - the vocal, youn sun nah:

Youn Sun Nah – vocals
Benjamin Moussay – piano
David Neerman – vibraphone
Yoni Zelnik – double bass
David Georgelet – drums

you can find some more info at the Australia Northern Europe Liaisons website.

i quite liked youn sun nah’s voice - it sounded a lot like a good mixture of yoshie nakano (ego-wrappin’) and sora lee, and at certain times it remined me of bjork in a very subtle kind of way. nevertheless, it was quite unique in its own way and sometimes was really exciting when she wasn’t being shy or quiet. the music was great - not a conventional jazz type; nah even (very joyfully) rapped from time to time.

what i found interesting about this band was that the members were actually all from different cultures. french, hebrew, british, korean etc. they met at CIM in france, so they’re still based there. nah sings in korean, french, and hebrew as well, but mainly in english. so all these multi-cultural aspects are blended in musically, lyrically, and visually as well, which is great. i noticed how those songs in korean were mostly really sad, slow, repetitive and quiet - i almost cried listening to one of the songs - those in english, on the other hand, were more lively, daring, fun, sometimes cutesy, and in faster beats. i wonder why. i’m really curious how differently she feels when she expresses herself artistically in different languages.

i definitely have different approaches to communication when i speak in different languages. ok, no, i don’t intentionally pause and think “oh, i’m going to speak korean now so i should communicate this way” but changes just come naturally. and i tend to behave differently depending on which culture i’m in. so jaz, or hee-jeong, in korea would probably be very different to jaz in australia. but still, this is all on a conversational level - so i really wonder, for an artistic work to have a global appeal, what is needed? are there any core elements that make something more communicatively effective and appealing across various cultures? we’re living in a culture that’s overflooded with shallow formulaic products - yes, i’m generalising and i am aware of some ridiculously fantastic cultures happening in many corners of the world, but one can’t deny that what adorno and horkheimer claimed fifty years ago is still happening (no, i don’t agree with their totalistic macro-approach but i do definitely concur with many of their concepts): the manufactured souless culture may in fact be demoting our opportunity of enlightenment to babarianism.

i’m a big believer of aesthetics. i believe that there are core elements of aesthetics that can be communicated across any culture. this is definitely one of the areas that i’d like to study more in the future. at the moment i only have some vague assumptions.

anyway, youn sun nah 5 wasn’t the best musical collaboration that i’ve ever encountered in my life, but i did think that they had some of those core qualities of aesthetics in different ways, and i immensely enjoyed their performance. it was their last concert in australia this time, but if you do have a chance somewhere else in the world - i think their next destination is china or singapore - do check them out. it’ll be a fun night for your senses in a quiet yet exciting way.