I’m Lying in the Ocean Singing My Song
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Hi, I’m Yana. And these are my thoughts on these feelings (thoughts on feelings, I know). I’m a first-year PhD student at the university of Vienna. My research focuses on the globalization of female archetypes and the role of colour coding in their representation across cultures. These are either small essays of mine or voice notes transcribed or assignments for the wonderful Moving Through Water course. Enjoy ☺ and come one, if you praise Joyce or Proust, you can definitely go through a Russian’s girl BurnBook.
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Grief: The Boy with the Band-Aids (this is a voice note, you can scroll, if you don’t have time, I won’t get mad, promise. And where you can see an ellipsis, it’s not me being original, it’s me crying, so shut up, the chapter is called Grief for a reason).
So, my first emotion is grief, according to the course. And I will introduce a photograph to it. And here comes the story. A lot of people in my culture, which is Slavic-slash-Russian culture, associate grief with death. I first really met with death when I was 19 years old. I had a friend named Ilya, and it was very weird because we reconnected when... We used to go to school together, and he was always the boy who cried a lot, like a big baby. Well, he was not a big one, he was just a small baby. And we reconnected when he went to Moscow for studying, to study at the university, and I was already studying there. And so we reconnected. And we texted a lot, and he turned out to be one of the kindest people I knew. And not in a cliché way, like one of the kindest people I knew, literally one of the kindest people ever. We only went... We only had one meeting. And on this meeting I noticed that he always wears Band-Aids with him. He always has them on him. And he kind of made a joke about it. Whenever I get a paper cut, my blood won't stop, so I need a Band-Aid. And mind you that he was a sportsman, he was a volleyball player, I mean basketball player, he was really good. Yeah... And at the end of the meeting I said, we're gonna see each other again, right? Because I noticed that he was kind of fragile, he couldn't really eat. We went to McDonald's, and he bought me a chocolate bar, and he hugged me, and he said, of course we're gonna meet again. And when we parted our ways, practically the next day he went to hospital. He was there for a long time. He needed a brain transplant, I think. Not a long time, but like a couple of days, but they seemed like an awfully long time. And the last thing he texted me was, I'm very, very tired. He was transported back to his home city in order for them to perform surgery on him. And then his father... I wrote to him a lot, and then his father answered. When Ilya died, we'll let you know about the... When you can say goodbye to him. That was my first meeting with grief. And probably from my mother, too, because a person my age died from something very weird and very, very fast. It's almost like some people have this belief that God wants to protect certain people and takes them away from Earth in order to make them angels, and I think it's true. So, yeah. Thank you for watching! I used to buy flowers every year for his birthday and the date when he departed, because that's what my mom suggested. And I sent them to his mother until I finally realized that I cannot go like this anymore. And this is when rage came. And I feel ashamed even admitting it, but it's like... I was so angry that he came into my life for such a short period of time. This all ended abruptly. And now I'm... And now I'm... And now I, for some reason, it's not his problem, it's the reason of my perception, of my culture's perception. And now I'm, for some reason, doomed to mourn. So, I don't do that anymore. But I remember him. And thank you, and now we're moving to rage, therefore.
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Rage (Don’t Play with my Toys! — voice notes¬es)
I feel like anger gets a bed rep and it’s unfair. Because in many situations it’s our holy rage that carries us in its arms (metaphorically) through the fire. And it’s actually quite sad that people often perceive it as a negative emotion. It’s rather inconvenient, yes, when your child, instead of letting another kid play with his toy, angrily hits them with a little shovel. But, on the other hand no matter how bad anger may sound — it’s our boundaries. And I think there’s no us without anger like there’s no home without walls.
So, I wanted to speak of rage. Because I write about women, I certainly deal with the feeling of rage a lot. When I read about female characters being misinterpreted, their voices being muted, or female heroines being gagged, their emotions being represented in a wrong way so that they may look insane, I definitely deal with the feeling of rage a lot. This is going to be very brief, but if my essays can be useful to anyone, and if there is anything I can tell, any piece of wisdom I can share with the world through this website, this would be that we actually have to follow the example set by the worst, in quotation marks, they're not literally the worst, they're just marked as the worst female heroines, like Clytemnestra, Medea, and yeah. If you look at more modern depictions, this would be Rosamund Pike in The Gone Girl, or Anya Taylor-Joy in The Menu, so you can picture that. We actually should follow their example, because if you ever have any problems with expressing your voice, with expressing your unique thoughts, with expressing the stream of consciousness that I'm so desperately trying to do now, it's probably coming from the fact that your anger is suppressed, and therefore, I'm sorry for getting all spiritual, but your throat chakra is blocked. And in me it was suppressed for so many years that it literally hurts now when I'm trying to speak, but I decided to bring the message anyway, because usually rage is holy. It's a very spiritual concept, not just you being angry, or petty, or passive-aggressive, your rage is holy, especially if you're a female, because there's a little remark here, why I'm saying especially if you're a female, because it usually stems from years of something being suppressed. Because as females we're taught that there are emotions very acceptable in a society, there are emotions that we are expected to perform, to experience, like joy, happiness, friendship, this is not an emotion, but yeah, love, also not an emotion, but still. And rage falls into the spectrum of emotions that are not expected from you, so therefore, when something emerges from you, I know that it's scary, it's like a storm, but you're the sea and not the storm, and when rage emerges, there are a lot of benefits to it actually, this is your creative force, so please channel it through any form of art possible. Thank you. I thought I would say it because it was surprising how many, how when in the class we discussed this in break rooms and it was surprising how basically whenever when I started talking about that every girl in my group knew what I was going to say and just after hearing the first few words like it's a common female knowledge so if I can pass pass it on to any girl who's reading this or any gendered person just so that you are aware what your loved ones may be experiencing this would be great I would be very happy. Scream like Medea. If any egos crush while you are doing it say: Oops, I’m the Sea and not the Storm, sorry not sorry.
Hi, I’m Yana. And these are my thoughts on these feelings (thoughts on feelings, I know). I’m a first-year PhD student at the university of Vienna. My research focuses on the globalization of female archetypes and the role of colour coding in their representation across cultures. These are either small essays of mine or voice notes transcribed or assignments for the wonderful Moving Through Water course. Enjoy ☺ and come one, if you praise Joyce or Proust, you can definitely go through a Russian’s girl BurnBook.
⚬
Grief: The Boy with the Band-Aids (this is a voice note, you can scroll, if you don’t have time, I won’t get mad, promise. And where you can see an ellipsis, it’s not me being original, it’s me crying, so shut up, the chapter is called Grief for a reason).
So, my first emotion is grief, according to the course. And I will introduce a photograph to it. And here comes the story. A lot of people in my culture, which is Slavic-slash-Russian culture, associate grief with death. I first really met with death when I was 19 years old. I had a friend named Ilya, and it was very weird because we reconnected when... We used to go to school together, and he was always the boy who cried a lot, like a big baby. Well, he was not a big one, he was just a small baby. And we reconnected when he went to Moscow for studying, to study at the university, and I was already studying there. And so we reconnected. And we texted a lot, and he turned out to be one of the kindest people I knew. And not in a cliché way, like one of the kindest people I knew, literally one of the kindest people ever. We only went... We only had one meeting. And on this meeting I noticed that he always wears Band-Aids with him. He always has them on him. And he kind of made a joke about it. Whenever I get a paper cut, my blood won't stop, so I need a Band-Aid. And mind you that he was a sportsman, he was a volleyball player, I mean basketball player, he was really good. Yeah... And at the end of the meeting I said, we're gonna see each other again, right? Because I noticed that he was kind of fragile, he couldn't really eat. We went to McDonald's, and he bought me a chocolate bar, and he hugged me, and he said, of course we're gonna meet again. And when we parted our ways, practically the next day he went to hospital. He was there for a long time. He needed a brain transplant, I think. Not a long time, but like a couple of days, but they seemed like an awfully long time. And the last thing he texted me was, I'm very, very tired. He was transported back to his home city in order for them to perform surgery on him. And then his father... I wrote to him a lot, and then his father answered. When Ilya died, we'll let you know about the... When you can say goodbye to him. That was my first meeting with grief. And probably from my mother, too, because a person my age died from something very weird and very, very fast. It's almost like some people have this belief that God wants to protect certain people and takes them away from Earth in order to make them angels, and I think it's true. So, yeah. Thank you for watching! I used to buy flowers every year for his birthday and the date when he departed, because that's what my mom suggested. And I sent them to his mother until I finally realized that I cannot go like this anymore. And this is when rage came. And I feel ashamed even admitting it, but it's like... I was so angry that he came into my life for such a short period of time. This all ended abruptly. And now I'm... And now I'm... And now I, for some reason, it's not his problem, it's the reason of my perception, of my culture's perception. And now I'm, for some reason, doomed to mourn. So, I don't do that anymore. But I remember him. And thank you, and now we're moving to rage, therefore.
⚬
Rage (Don’t Play with my Toys! — voice notes¬es)
I feel like anger gets a bed rep and it’s unfair. Because in many situations it’s our holy rage that carries us in its arms (metaphorically) through the fire. And it’s actually quite sad that people often perceive it as a negative emotion. It’s rather inconvenient, yes, when your child, instead of letting another kid play with his toy, angrily hits them with a little shovel. But, on the other hand no matter how bad anger may sound — it’s our boundaries. And I think there’s no us without anger like there’s no home without walls.
So, I wanted to speak of rage. Because I write about women, I certainly deal with the feeling of rage a lot. When I read about female characters being misinterpreted, their voices being muted, or female heroines being gagged, their emotions being represented in a wrong way so that they may look insane, I definitely deal with the feeling of rage a lot. This is going to be very brief, but if my essays can be useful to anyone, and if there is anything I can tell, any piece of wisdom I can share with the world through this website, this would be that we actually have to follow the example set by the worst, in quotation marks, they're not literally the worst, they're just marked as the worst female heroines, like Clytemnestra, Medea, and yeah. If you look at more modern depictions, this would be Rosamund Pike in The Gone Girl, or Anya Taylor-Joy in The Menu, so you can picture that. We actually should follow their example, because if you ever have any problems with expressing your voice, with expressing your unique thoughts, with expressing the stream of consciousness that I'm so desperately trying to do now, it's probably coming from the fact that your anger is suppressed, and therefore, I'm sorry for getting all spiritual, but your throat chakra is blocked. And in me it was suppressed for so many years that it literally hurts now when I'm trying to speak, but I decided to bring the message anyway, because usually rage is holy. It's a very spiritual concept, not just you being angry, or petty, or passive-aggressive, your rage is holy, especially if you're a female, because there's a little remark here, why I'm saying especially if you're a female, because it usually stems from years of something being suppressed. Because as females we're taught that there are emotions very acceptable in a society, there are emotions that we are expected to perform, to experience, like joy, happiness, friendship, this is not an emotion, but yeah, love, also not an emotion, but still. And rage falls into the spectrum of emotions that are not expected from you, so therefore, when something emerges from you, I know that it's scary, it's like a storm, but you're the sea and not the storm, and when rage emerges, there are a lot of benefits to it actually, this is your creative force, so please channel it through any form of art possible. Thank you. I thought I would say it because it was surprising how many, how when in the class we discussed this in break rooms and it was surprising how basically whenever when I started talking about that every girl in my group knew what I was going to say and just after hearing the first few words like it's a common female knowledge so if I can pass pass it on to any girl who's reading this or any gendered person just so that you are aware what your loved ones may be experiencing this would be great I would be very happy. Scream like Medea. If any egos crush while you are doing it say: Oops, I’m the Sea and not the Storm, sorry not sorry.
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Longing (assignment for course meeting number 2)
There are a couple of things this quote made me think of: so, first of all, of the Korean artist Koo Jong A who did a project for the Venetian Biennale and called it Scent of Home. I believe it’s about how many different things can remind us of home, e.g. she mentions the guy who speaks about donuts in Canada that for some reason reminded him about his home in Korea. Therefore, our existence is just fragments that we're trying to grasp, like little beads that we're trying to make a necklace of. Why am I saying that these are all fragments? Because they all seem completely irrelevant, if you think about it (like, if I say that the smell of wet asphalt reminds me of the person I love — the very idea seems kind of absurd, doesn’t it because those notions are not linked to each other). At the same time they're very closely intertwined, which I guess is the reason why people with synesthesia see the color of letters and some people may say oh letters don't have colors but they do, if people see them and if people can taste them they have tastes and smells and etc. Maybe that’s why many poets wrote about their experience of the letters (Rimbaud, Nabokov), and yes, those could be merely associations, but I think there’s something more to it.
Also, the Quote got me thinking about Plato with his cave metaphor: that we're all just sitting chained in a cave and what we see are not fragments but shadows of real things and that is kind of sad.
But Meeting Two isn’t about sadness, it’s about longing and longing to me is a bit like fate. I think this quote could be speaking about fate, too because when you are preparing to go somewhere or meet someone everything around you is being gathered into this big, big painting that is all different brush strokes on a canvas. And also, different threads that lead you to a specific place or a specific person. And those are my reflections on the Quote.
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My Reflection on Despair and Hope (Inspired by Pope.L and My Dissertation Project):
Hello ☺ this is gonna be like my diary entry. So, in my work, I explore the globalization and color-coding of female archetypes across literature and film — particularly the persistent binary of the “normal” (pure, naive, passive) and “oppressed” (seductive, dangerous, powerful) feminine. Inspired by Pope.L’s collapsing towers in Hospital, I imagine these archetypes as symbolic structures — once seen as stable, but now visibly fragile, leaking, and on the edge of collapse. I had an idea: the tower collapsing depicting a collapse of stereotypical depictions of women in art, film, literature (like with Pope but he had a different idea). Like the collapse of depicting women simply as passive (soft, naive) and ostracized (fatal, bad).
There is despair in the figure of the dark feminine: characters like Lilith, Morgana, Medea or femme fatales who have long been cast out, punished, or othered. But within that despair lies the seed of transformation. I see hope in the cracks — a hope that we are witnessing not the erasure of femininity, but the collapse of restrictive archetypes. Through this collapse, I believe a more expansive, hybrid, and inclusive portrayal of femininity can emerge — one in which light and dark, strength and softness, desire and wisdom can coexist without hierarchy or shame.
P.S. Sorry, I didn’t write anything about contemplation because I feel like I’ve bored you enough and about joy too because I have OCD and I’m afraid to be robbed of it.