Storytelling and creativity mean two things for me: to explore oneself and to connect with other people. For example, I could not appreciate modern or contemporary poems before I wrote one as homework for my creative writing class. Practicing and trying help me to understand the process and significance of the things that were unknown to me. 

Another example, after I took an advanced oil painting class at my university, I just feel that art history hardly grasped the meaning of art. As I experienced many class critiques and most of my classmates are professional artists, talking with them and listening to them totally changed my comprehension of art. Artists actually do not think in the way that art history scholars supposed. 

Therefore, through my collaboration with The Creative Process, I am getting to know more writers/artists and their works and further develop my communication and organization skills. 

I have taken storytelling, creative writing and art studio classes, and have always cherished group critiques. I have always enjoyed writing as part of my art studio classes. I helped my instructors to explain or expand difficult concepts to my classmates and helped some classmates to proofread their studio-related writings. I'd love the opportunity to incorporate my knowledge of literature, psychology and languages into a more creative process.

I am now in the middle of my GAP year. Now I study at Alliance Francaise in Paris and plan to take a French C1 exam this May. I read 10 pages Andre Gide everyday and am qlso endeavoring to pick up my German. I look forward to taking part in The Creative Process’ interview with the director of the Goethe Institut in Paris. I plan to read der Zeuberberg in the next few months. This fall I will go to Dartmouth College for my graduate study at the Comparative Literature Department.

Love Poems

Some prefer to express love in foreign tongues,

And brag to others how much love they deliver.

But mistakes, misspellings and misuses are tons,

That I often doubt if they can be less clever.

English? Too public and common to be a love-carrier.

Do speak French! l’Amour, l’intimité, et la romantisme*.

When mimicking a Werther*, please use hubsche, edele but not tolle*.

But I know in native language you can write a love poem better.

My friend says to me: do not be

So harsh on the lovers, who love

Despite the imperfection in language

Of the missing noun (subject, object or both) and verb.

I just wish the lovers to learn from my father

To “borrow” a finished flawless poem and never mention the author.

l’Amour, l’intimité, et la romantisme*: French, love, intimacy and romanticism

Werther*: the sentimental protagonist of a German epistolary novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

hubsche, edele, tolle*: German, handsome, noble, great (all in female form). The former two are commonly used in Old German chivalry poems to describe a fair lady. The latter is a comparatively mundane and unclear adjective to praise a lady

l’Amour, l’intimité, et la romantisme*: French, love, intimacy and romanticism

Werther*: the sentimental protagonist of a German epistolary novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

hubsche, edele, tolle*: German, handsome, noble, great (all in female form). The former two are commonly used in Old German chivalry poems to describe a fair lady. The latter is a comparatively mundane and unclear adjective to praise a lady

Feeling naked. Feeling wicked.

You can feel naked without being naked.

Some studio classes have models naked, I wonder

If the witness exacerbates the feeling from naked to wicked.

In a writing critique, I feel half naked.

My words are like newborn babies that flounder.

So you can feel naked without being naked.

A painting critique is worse, I feel fully naked,

When people are standing by my paintings and when they ponder.

Because the witness exacerbates the feeling from naked to wicked.

I may feel less naked,

If I am going to rework on the works that now stagger.

But still I can feel naked without being naked.

Optimistically, in academics, I feel somehow less naked,

As quotes and analyses are various kinds of armor.

Hardly the witness exacerbates the feeling from naked to wicked.

But once a professor told me my writings are wicked,

She looked at me as if I the English Department murdered.

At this moment I feel so naked without being naked,

Especially her witness exacerbates the feeling from naked to wicked.

Drag Ball 2019

The art of moving without touching

Is hard. That’s why I am going

To a party every year by self-forcing.

Nothing can be learned without practicing.