It has been a while since I have last written a post and, I must say, the random energy that hit at 00:30 is definitely something. As you may have noticed, I may or may not have made an overhaul on the entire website too!
How is everything? I am not sure if this will reach anyone, if at all. But I do like the idea of having this ‘blog’ thing out in the open, ready to be discovered by someone or something (AI is probably going to scan my website and conclude that there is nothing of value here, anyways).
Rebuilding this site has made me think about where I am right now creatively, and how much I’ve grown (and doubted and paused) since I last put work online. It has been two years that I have been studying this degree and, well, I frankly have no regrets.
This new version of linographs feels more like a portfolio and more like me, in a website form perhaps. I imagine this blog as a quiet corner of my site. It is less polished, less flashy images, less everything but more personal. A scrapbook of sorts; maybe I’ll add silly thoughts here and maybe I’ll also throw in some personal anecdotes from time to time, all in all things that do not really have a place in the corporate corners of my website.
To be honest, I wasn’t sure if I’d bring this site back at all. But then a particular seminar teacher and his funny emails reminded me that I should continue building it. So here it is again, up and running. For a while, I felt unsure what a “portfolio” should even be. Like, a showcase?? A CV?? A shop window????? But the more I sat with it, the more confusing it got and I just ended up building whatever this new version is.
These blogs certainly won’t be a place for announcements or SEO-optimised anything. Just a small, open corner for late-night writing, half-thoughts, behind-the-scenes stories, maybe even dream logs or book notes if I’m brave. I will probably just treat this as a place where I can upload my recaps every now and then, a place where you can land from time to time and say “hey this guy is alive still”.
I think a lot about presence (thanks, Hemen!). What is presence, anyway? Is it being here? are you feeling my presence at this very moment? In hindsight I think this last question is kind of scary. Something a ghost would perhaps say. But yeah, I feel like we often let things slip through us and it is eerily scary how these can so easily slip away from you: a moment, a place, a person, etc.
I went to a picnic just yesterday and today I met up with a friend of mine who also was at the picnic. She told me that it always feels weird to go home after a really fun, social day outside. It’s like your body comes back before your mind does, as if there is an echo of people around you, of laughter still sitting on your skin, but the room is quiet now. You turn the lights on, take your shoes off, and sit down… and suddenly everything feels distant. Not sad, exactly. Just… somewhere else.
Maybe that’s what presence is, too — not just being in the moment, but noticing the small ache when it passes. Anyway. I don’t know how often I’ll write here. Maybe once a week, maybe once a month, maybe only when 00:30 hits again. But for now, it feels good to press publish. To carve out this quiet corner. To say, quite simply, that I’m still here.
Before I end I would like to present to my amazing four readers this wonderful and greatest invention known to humankind: Dame Blanche and whatever I have created (toast with butter, salt, pepper paired with the Dame Blanche).
I may have made at least two of my four readers unsubscribe with this one.
Xin Lin
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