click here for a preface to my lists, and click here to go home.

Micro-saddles I like (as of May 16, 2024):

• Record 2, wherein I wrote about Xujiahui and the feeling of just starting to do guitar noise.
• Record 3, wherein I lament the difficulty of reading Shijing (the classic of poetry).
• Record 7, wherein I describe the train ride to Jinan.
• Record 15, wherein I talk about wandering the midwest.

Things I'd like to write about someday:

• Xianyu
• Photography, pictures, film and their relationship with writing
• Lu Xun (particularly his stories 一件小事, 孤独者 and 在酒楼上)
• My love for paper-based reference works, old dictionaries, maps etc
• What studying math feels like at a tactile/material level
• Pens, paper, notebooks, stationary etc
• Wishing I could find a way to mix fiction and documentary
• Sketches/characterizations of people I know/knew once
• Vicarious joy in fashion via my girlfriend
• Email
• Shanghai suburbs and American suburbs
• The insides of other people’s houses
• Akira Kurosawa (particularly Dodeskaden, Dreams, Red Beard and I Live in Fear)
• Shanghai clubs/bars that were already closed years before I got here, but which live on in the memories of everyone who surrounds me
• Fear of talking to strangers

Japanese post-war contemplative first-person novels I've read and enjoyed, mostly (but not entirely) I-novels (my favorites towards the top):

• Plainsong by Kazushi Hosaka
• Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami
• Almost Transparent Blue by Ryu Murakami
• Singular Rebellion by Saiichi Maruya
• The Part of Me That Isn't Broken Inside by Kazufumi Shiraishi
• Territory of Light by Yūko Tsushima
• No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai
• The Guest Cat by Takashi Hiraide

Angles to approach writing from:

• Recording a place, event, people as I experience it
• Unearthing something I never experienced, e.g. through interviews, collating written sources, logical analysis
• Combing through my own memories
• Closing my eyes and recording the dreams and fantasies that spontaneously occur when I try to think of nothing
• Sifting through material objects, e.g. books or electronics, and describing said objects to the best of my ability
• Imagining the world through the eyes of each of the strangers I walk by on the street or sit next to on the subway, people I can’t talk to. Pondering how they ended up here, wearing the clothes they’re wearing, talking to the people they’re talking to

Types of books:

• Small Japanese paperbacks. I remember reading 1Q84 and not understanding how the male protagonist was able to fit the paperback novel he was reading in his pocket. I assumed he must have massive pockets, or he must be bending it out of shape. I wish the rest of the world would become a little more sensible and start making books in the same form factor. (Thanks to balckwell for making me think of this).
• Books with little fold-out maps, diagrams or color prints of paintings behind the front or back cover.
• Collections of short poems, paintings or micro-fiction to place beneath my pillow and flip through and view through the darkness when i find myself awake late at night
• Books that are crumbling to pieces, that I’m too scared to even open

Pleasant outfits encountered in music videos:

• Go East by New Pants. Obviously there’s the Sun Yat-sen suits, but I’m also a big fan of the good old red adidas trackpants + black t-shirt.
• I was born in Beijing by Leon Lai. His jacket. Also the sudden transition between hyper-intense serious expression and idiotic-grin + hair-shaking at 1:39.
• Binetsu by Makoto Kawamoto, in which she wears a hat, hoodie, shorts, and boots, keeping bare knees revealed (the knees are the most important part of the human body). Canadian friends, what is that kind of hat called? My girlfriend has a massive collection of them.
• Old Torturing Nurse video. The mask.
• Ah ya’s hair.
• Ad featuring Good Morning Call by Kyoko Koizumi. The polka-dot pajamas.

Children’s-song-esque singing on top of quirky electronics:

• Angel Noise by MikaTen (Toshiji Mikawa and Tentenko)
• Tanoshii Ongaku
• A Kidorikko song, but I forget which
• A few moments in Colo Colo Meets the Stripes
• Doddodo
• Picky Picnic (thank you Xiaoxi for originally recommending this to me.)

Writing that has influenced how I think about software/technology (though mostly just software):

• My Obsession by William Gibson
• The Dream Machine by Mitchell Waldrop. There was a time in my life when I seriously considered becoming a “computer programmer.” Towards that aim, I read a bunch of books about the history of computing (which perhaps says something about my personality), and this was the most eye-opening and only one I’d really recommend. It focuses intensely on a series of developments and personages that the other histories I read only alluded to or at best devoted a chapter to. It helps one imagine another world where computers became something very different from what they are today.
• Ted Nelson's Computer Paradigm, Expressed as One-Liners. Various short writings and lectures from people like Ted Nelson and Alan Kay were what made me want to learn more about the “alternate history of computing” described above. This page is probably the quickest introduction to those ideas. Of course, after having basked in visions of a better technological world for many years, I am skeptical of the utility of “ideas”, though that’s something to talk about more in an essay, rather than a list. Anyway, I suspect his webpage, which describes many attempts at solutions to the problems described in the linked article, would be very interesting to many Neocities users.
• Time Out: Confessions of a Watch Geek by Gary Shteyngart
• Tim Rogers on Toro: Mainichi Issho. Meditating on it and all the feelings it awoke in me was how I personally started to become terrified of consumerism. Though as always, that process was much more complicated and ambivalent than what the preceding sentence suggests. Again, this is a topic for an essay, not a list. Anyway, the last sentence reminds me of the last sentence of Qian Zhongshu's novel Fortress Besieged.
• The descriptions of word processors and writing in 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami.

Works that felt like brand new ways to write when I first read them:

(The emphasis is on “when I first read them”. In many cases, I went on to read many similar works and there are often more representative examples of the kinds of writing these works introduced me to — but the focus of this list is on autobiographicity).

• Deadeye Dick by Kurt Vonnegut
• As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams by Lady Sarashina
• 2015 by Wang Xiaobo
• The Nose by Nikolai Gogol
• The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis

Live performances I've done since coming to China:

• May 11, 2024. Yu and Qiaoqiao at Trigger.
• Apr 6, 2024. Yu, Qiaoqiao and someone else, impromptu at A Bunch of Noise jam session, hosted at System.
• Mar 30, 2024. Yu and Qiaoqiao at Trigger.
• Jan 28, 2024. Solo at Trigger.
• Dec 23, 2023. Solo impromptu at Mingshi's Bass day.

Lists I’d like to make later:

• Interesting subway stations in Shanghai
• Live musical performances I’ve been to
• Haruki-Murakami-influenced Chinese language authors
• Essays and fictional works that contain descriptions of paper reference works

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