In the Mountains, Birdsong, 2020.

"In the Mountains, Birdsong" is about a journey through love and nostalgia, from Alaska to Amsterdam to Guangzhou. While a "love letter" to someone I have met during a wilderness leadership course in Alaska, it also expresses my nostalgia toward a past that blends reality with imagination. Nostalgia, for Svetlana Boym, is “a longing for a home that no longer exists or has never existed,” or a romance that exists in our own fantasy. This modern condition is at once tempting and dangerous. It may lead us to confuse the actual home and the imaginary one, to devote ourselves to reconstructing a phantom homeland. Through the process of writing this piece, however, I seek to embrace the ambivalences of longing with humor and irony, to at once harbor dreams of unrealized possibilities and break free from their chains. My dreams about Alaska, about the mountains, and about "you" thus become part of my strength to travel my own creative path.