Coda

“I am a cotton candy cloud on a rainy day, the unrealized dream of a day unborn”

― Nikki Giovanni, Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day

There’s a certain kind of ache that comes with loving something so deeply that it

terrifies you. For me, that pain has always been associated with art.

Because as much as I love art, I also fear it just as intensely. The truth is that I never

dared to ever truly pursue it, preferring instead to hold it at a distance. Creating art

means existing in that space between wanting to be seen and the fear of being known.

And that was something I was never quite ready to confront.

So instead, I intellectualize my emotions, embed them deep into my writing, displacing

them into metaphors or literary allusions, hoping that someone reads between the

lines to see the confessions hidden beneath. It’s a conflict I’ve carried with me and

explored throughout my works, time and time again, until I question whether my voice

is authentic or merely another form of performance. An allusion to the dream that I

should be pursuing.

David Foster Wallace wrote of new sincerity as a form of rebellion against the cynicism

of postmodernism and a return to vulnerability, to the raw earnestness of human

emotions. But in a capitalistic world where everything is commodified, packaged, and

performed, even sincerity becomes just another means of consumption. Nowadays, we

commodify our pains, aestheticize our melancholy, name a price on our experiences,

then call it authenticity. This reveals a persisting contradiction between the aesthetic of

melancholy and the reality of existing in our fractured world, one in which art is both a

refuge and a prison. In this world, art is seen more as a spectacle than an expression, a

recognition that creation itself is a form of performance.

It’s easier to bear the weight of pain when it’s articulated. It’s safer to be vulnerable

when it’s framed as critique. But beyond this facade, it’s just another way of staying

concealed while still demanding to be seen. Despite this contradiction, I continue to

write because it’s the only way I know how to stay close to what truly resonates with

me. I write to stay tethered to something real, even if that something is fleeting,

slipping through my fingers, barely out of grasp. Even if what I’m writing isn’t

necessarily what I want to say. It’s my way of trying to connect, to reach beyond myself

and into something greater than what this world demands of us.

We live in the age of Nietzschean decadence, where meaning has become

commodified and stripped of its purity, leaving us with a cacophonous litany of curated

experiences and manufactured truths. It's part of why David Foster Wallace's notion of

new sincerity resonated with me so profoundly. The truth is I’m not exempt from all the

cynicism, the irony, the detachment. At times, I have all this bitterness and resentment

towards the world, its flawed systems, and its oppressive infrastructures, bubbling up

inside of me. I just choose not to let it consume me. In a postmodern world shrouded by

thinly veiled hopelessness masquerading as self-aware irony and critique. My sincerity,

no matter how unpolished or uncertain, is perhaps my greatest act of defiance.

Sincerity is not the absence of irony, but the willingness to feel despite it. It’s choosing

to stay open in a world that begs us to close off. It’s my way of saying that I still think

about everything that we said, all the things we hesitate to say, and all the words left

unsaid, and now this is my final response to you.

A coda—the closing movement of the long, uncertain compositions of unanswered

questions and (not so) quiet introspections. Because despite all my fears andhesitations, despite all my uncertainties and reservations, my love and sincerity

ultimately outweigh it all. This, then, is a kind of love letter. To art, to the medium that

has both haunted and redefined me. To you who live somewhere between the lines,

viewing my works through a margin. And to me, who, despite everything, still dares to

believe that sincerity matters, that they can hold space for what we can’t carry alone.

Art doesn’t save us. It doesn’t give us all the answers. But maybe it can help us

remember. Maybe it can carry the things we don’t want to let go of, even if we don’t

know how to say them. And that, in itself, is a special kind of love.

Love and sincerity are the ultimate undoing. First the reckoning, then the fall.