1. I think editing is a form of care

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. & care an overused, already callused word

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. we wanted a space where everyone could do it together, at once

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4. after all it’s not fair for just one or two to give, give, give

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5. but in the end, there were latecomers & earlyleavers, spectators & frontliners

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6. the lovers of our words unable to perfectly reciprocate

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

7. editing is constant, unseen, unfinished—that is if you really care

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

8. every attempt to tie it up creates another fray…

 

[1]

 

Hao Guang and I meet through a mutual friend a few years ago. As far as first social encounters go, it goes as well as could be hoped for, and we quickly become friends.

 

I constantly and shamelessly suggest some form of collaboration, like some kind of promise that I know we’ll never live up to. Already a creature of intense self-doubt, I feel certain that there is nothing that I could bring to the table.

 

He gives courteous replies for a number of months, before eventually, by some chance, navigating through life changes, busy work schedules, and the challenges of a global pandemic, we circle back around to this as though it was the most natural thing in the world.

 

 

 

 

 

[2]

 

I set up the laptop in a corner for our only video submission, a pair of films by Alvin Tang. The laptop is old enough that I worry about its reliability, but it sits in the corner through the whole event. I wonder who has encountered the films today, who has chosen to engage, and what they will take away from them.

 

During a lull in proceedings, I watch the videos loop on the too-small computer screen. For a trice, my mind flashes back to my youth, to a time when I was a film studies student and an aspiring film critic. I think back to my unfinished graduate degree and all the pieces I will never pick up.

 

A pang of regret—in which I revel, indulge.

 

 

 

 

 

[3]

 

Before any of this, Marg and I had really only known about each other adjacently—passing through the same spaces, sharing social media mutuals, hearing about each other from friends. We crossed paths without crossing paths.

 

It was coincidence that brought us together again. By chance, long before Hao Guang and I had discussed any of this we ran into each other at a café, as though drawn together by some hand of fate. He told me about the new place he was opening. This paved the way for the idea of Loose Ends, which would eventually find its way into his new café, as if always destined to inhabit this space.

 

Perhaps some conversations lurk in waiting, waiting for the light of day. Stars aligning, chance willing, sometimes, people find each other again. Creation takes place in its own time.

 

 

 

 

 

[4]

 

I am surprised at the people who come through, the people who step into this welcoming space all primed to interact, engage, participate. In the crowds, I see new people, old friends, and connections recently made. They arrive at the event with open minds, their voices rising as they encounter unfinished pieces and unfamiliar faces. The space buzzes with ideas and incompleteness.

 

All connections that form—and those that don’t—are a type of exchange, an unspoken contract. I offer up my vulnerabilities and anxieties, my incompleteness, in the hope of finding acceptance, understanding, love. Perhaps this is the spirit of Loose Ends, a willingness to showcase what’s inchoate, inadequate, lacking, or partial as a personal gambit.

 

I find myself pleased with the way this has turned out. If nothing else, to embrace our loose ends is a mode of living. Let us constantly generate these unfinished conversations, these incomplete thoughts, these nascent ideas. May we never run out of the things to pick up again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[5]

 

I had asked if you would be interested in participating, if you’d wanted to come by. I think I wanted to be seen by you in a space, in a context that you had yet to see me, as though to say that this, this is truly me.

 

The flip side of connection is the risk of silence, the inerasable tang of regret. Every question, every hello becomes charged with an implication different from its surface meaning.

 

Some loops are better unclosed, some loose ends unfinished. You never showed up, but such loose ends happen. Words lodged in silence. Apologies unsaid. Hopes unspoken. To leave things unfinished is perhaps the best way things could have ended.

 

How is it that an invitation long after the limits of its expiry can still feel open?

 

How eternity stings.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[6]

 

Love Letter started life as a half-hearted attempt at some type of microfiction. It is an account of the long wait after the posting of the titular love letter. I started creating it after reading a Quim Monzó short story, which it takes after both structurally and thematically. It stands as a monument to the failure to live up to its luminous inspiration.

 

The point of Love Letter is the passing of time, and how something as visceral and specific as heartbreak slowly decays into archetype and trope, and time becomes meaningless in the process.

 

Love Letter is a perpetual work in progress. Its protagonist’s plight, held in thrall by the silence of non-answers, is perhaps a skewed reflection of my own. It has seen several rewrites and a few different experimental forms. I think a part of me wishes that it will never see completion.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[7]

 

I look for tenderness in you

Something beyond the Eat Pray Love rhetoric of the Instagram feed

beyond your Perks of Being a Wildflower film recommendation

beyond the limited discourse of slow living or self-help books

beyond the confines of childhood religion

beyond what your love would have given me

 

I look for tenderness in myself

Something beyond what I’m capable of

a Sisyphean labour within myself

a sad embodiment of Zeno’s paradox

an unfinished draft of a person

a quirk in progress without pronouncements or closure

 

The more I find myself

the further we drift apart

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[8]

 

“Did I miss the mark/Overstep the line/That only you could see”

 

In the days after the event, Bob Dylan’s “Shooting Star” is an unexpected refrain. I think back to the new connections made, and the ones left behind, bridges made, threads snapped. I revel in the gratitude of newfound bonds, embrace the regret of lost friendships.

 

Sometimes I think that this is the crux of life, finding and losing each other over and over again, a constant negotiation of loose ends.

 

 

This dynamic work is also an exercise in performativity, poetry and visual design, and is open to digital consumption and interpretation. It moves us towards a possible future of what "paper" can be – writ large and limited only by the imagination.

 

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